Jorge Rodríguez assumes the presidency of the Venezuelan Parliament for the fourth term

Caracas, Jan 5 (EFE).- The official deputy Jorge Rodríguez was re-elected this Friday, for the fourth consecutive year, as president of the National Assembly (AN/Parliament) of Venezuela, with a strong Chavista majority and which has controlled the Legislative Branch since 2021. .

For the board of directors for the 2024-2025 period, Pedro Infante, former Minister of Sports, was also re-elected as first vice president, and América Pérez, as second vice president.

This Chavista board of directors, approved despite the negative vote of the opposition group, will govern the penultimate year of the legislature of this AN, whose five-year term ends in January 2026 and which, from its beginning, in January 2021, and until December 2023, approved 74 laws.

The plenary session of Parliament also re-elected María Alejandra Hernández as secretary for this new legislative period and José Molina as undersecretary, both of whom have held these positions since September 2023, when the previous secretary, Rosalba Gil, was appointed rector of the National Electoral Council.

The ratified president of the AN was sworn in by young students and representatives of different unions present in the session chamber and, subsequently, he swore in his colleagues on the board of directors, whom he asked to fight for peace and the defense of Venezuelan territory, especially for the Essequibo, a rich area that Venezuela disputes with Guyana.

“I swear (…) by the right to enjoy the territory of Guayana Esequiba (…) that belongs to us by history (…) I swear by the strength that it gives us to have rescued Parliament from ignominy and darkness will not give rest to my arm, nor rest to my soul until I see the task of continuing the work of building good laws accomplished,” Rodríguez said during his swearing-in.

The current Parliament is made up of 277 deputies, of which 256 are Chavistas, 20 from the minority opposition – designated by the traditional “selling out” to the ruling party -, and one from the Popular Revolutionary Alternative, a left-wing coalition formed by dissidents of Chavismo. practiced by President Nicolás Maduro.

Of the 256 Chavistas, the vast majority belong to the PSUV, and the rest to formations that are part, like the ruling party, of the Great Simón Bolívar Patriotic Pole (GPPSB), founded by the late president Hugo Chávez (1999-2013).