Venezuela’s President Chastised by His Top Prosecutor<br />By NICHOLAS CASEYMARCH 31, 2017<br />IQUITOS, Peru — Venezuela’s attorney general on Friday condemned the decision by the country’s Supreme Court to seize power from the National<br />Assembly as "a rupture in the constitutional order" — a rare rebuke of President Nicolás Maduro from a top figure in his own government.<br />On Thursday, President Juan Manuel Santos of Colombia joined the criticism, writing on Twitter: "I raise our voice of protest, in solidarity with democracy."<br />On Venezuela’s streets, however, public expressions of dissent remained relatively subdued, with the few scattered protests nothing out of the ordinary.<br />At a regularly scheduled news conference in Caracas, the attorney general, Luisa Ortega, said<br />that the ruling, which transferred all powers of the country’s National Assembly to the court, violated the inclusive spirit of the country’s laws.<br />But her criticism of the ruling exposed a rare fissure within the leftist movement led by Mr. Maduro, which<br />has mainly presented a united front as he has accumulated more and more power over the last year.<br />Although she is one of the country’s top law enforcement officials, it is unclear what ability<br />Ms. Ortega has to stop the court’s decision, given the growing authority of the president.<br />The court’s decision, issued late Wednesday night, has generated condemnation both within and outside of Venezuela<br />that the country has become a dictatorship in all but name.
