Venezuelans comment interim presidency's legality

Constitutional lawyers and opposition politicians pointed out on 7 March that Venezuela's acting president Nicolás Maduro Moros, who many expect will seek election as successor to Hugo Chávez, could not legally and simultaneously be acting president, Vice-President and presidential candidate. Elections were expected within a month but a jurist told the broadcaster Globovisión on 7 March that these may be postponed by days or weeks. Juan Manuel Rafalli told Globovisión that to run for the presidency Maduro would either have to appoint a vice-president or the Supreme Court would have to make a pertinent ruling. It was perhaps unlikely that the court, which had stated nothing so far, would make an obstructive ruling. Certain opposition politicians observed earlier that the parliamentary speaker should legally have taken over the interim presidency with the President's "absolute" absence, and parliament should have convened an extraordinary session. On this the jurist Gerardo Blyde told the daily El Nacional that Article 33 of the constitution permitted the Executive Vice-President to "take charge" of the presidency if the President was no longer in office, interpreting this as distinct from "becoming president," Europa Press reported. He said this meant he remained Vice-President while exercising presidential duties and that pursuant to the Constitution's Article 229 could not also be a candidate. The opposition Table of Democratic Unity (Mesa de Unidad Democrática, MUD) observed separately that election laws prevented Maduro from running for the presidency as an acting rather than an elected president. That law they stated required public servants running for an elected office to resign their positions from the first day of the campaign, Europa Press reported. A member of the MUD secretariat Ramón José Medina said in turn that the opposition agreed elections could be held 45 or 60 days after the presidential demise rather than 30, given conditions, Globovisión and EFE reported on 7 March. Three names Medina cited as possible presidential aspirants for the MUD coalition were Henrique Capriles Radonsky, the candidate who failed to win the presidency in October 2012, the mayor of Caracas Antonio Ledezma and the legislator María Corina Machado.