Venezuela’s Supreme Court on Saturday designated Vice-President Delcy Rodríguez as the country’s acting president following the capture of President Nicolas Maduro by the United States.
The court ruled that Rodríguez should “assume and exercise, in an acting capacity, all the attributes, duties and powers inherent to the office of President to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defence of the nation.”
According to the ruling, Rodríguez will take on “the office of President of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, to guarantee administrative continuity and the comprehensive defence of the Nation.”
The court also announced that it would deliberate further to “determine the applicable legal framework to guarantee the continuity of the State, the administration of government, and the defence of sovereignty in the face of the forced absence of the President of the Republic.”
Meanwhile, US President Donald Trump stated that the United States would oversee Venezuela until a leadership transition could be organised.
“We’re going to run the country until such time as we can do a safe, proper and judicious transition,” Trump said during a press conference at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida.
“So we don’t want to be involved with having somebody else get in, and we have the same situation that we had for the last long period of years.”
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Trump offered limited details on how the US would manage a sovereign nation whose vice-president, legislature, and military continue to oppose the intervention. He indicated that the plan would include deploying US oil companies to Venezuela, despite his existing embargo on all Venezuelan oil, and keeping US forces on alert.
“We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure, the oil infrastructure, and start making money for the country,” Trump said.
A plane carrying Maduro reportedly landed just before 5 pm local time at Stewart Airport in New York. He is expected to be transported to New York City, according to an anonymous source familiar with the matter.
Trump added that the US intervention would be coordinated “with a group” mostly consisting of senior US officials, with a focus on restoring Venezuela’s oil infrastructure while ensuring that the Venezuelan people are “also taken care of.”