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CARACAS, Venezuela — (AP) — Venezuela's Supreme Court, loyal to President Nicolás Maduro, on Tuesday ordered the takeover of two influential political parties opposed to the socialist government ahead of parliamentary elections expected this year. The court suspended and replaced the board of directors for the Justice First party a day after the same move against the Democratic Action, one of the nation's oldest and largest parties. It was part of a “necessary restructuring process,” the court said in rulings posted on Facebook. No legal action was taken, however, against Popular Will, the party of opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who...

Venezuelan opposition leaders are rejecting a 60-day state of emergency declared by President Nicolás Maduro. Maduro declared the state of emergency over the weekend, giving himself decree powers to intervene in the economy and protect national sovereignty. He said the expanded powers were needed to guard against U.S. meddling in the socialist country. Opposition leader Henrique Capriles called the move unconstitutional Tuesday because Maduro acted unilaterally. Capriles said Venezuelans should reject the decree. …

Leaders of Venezuela's opposition are claiming victory ahead of official results in Sunday's crucial legislative elections that could alter the country's balance of power after 17 years of socialist rule. Hours after polls closed, several opposition leaders took to the Internet to announce that they had won a majority of seats in the National Assembly for the first time since 1998. But with no official results released and the ruling socialist party not commenting, their claims could not be confirmed. "The results are as we expected. Venezuela won," former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said on Twitter. "With great humility, serenity...

What could go wrong? A lot, if you consider the former peanut farmer and president’s last intervention in Venezuela.Joshua Goodman of AP reports on Carter’s expressed interest in going to Caracas: Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter is expressing concern about Venezuela's escalating political crisis and wants to meet with leaders on both sides in an upcoming trip. Carter, a mediator of past political conflict in the deeply polarized South American nation, made the offer in private letters he sent this week to President Nicolas Maduro and opposition leader Henrique Capriles. Expressing "grave concern" about the loss of life in recent...

The Obama administration is refusing to recognize Venezuelan President-elect Nicolás Maduro and says a recount of this week’s election should occur. Testifying before Congress, Secretary of State John Kerry backed the call by opposition leader Henrique Capriles for the vote count of Sunday’s presidential election to be re-examined. …

Venezuela’s electoral commission has declared acting President Nicolás Maduro the winning successor to his late mentor Hugo Chávez. Opposition rival Henrique Capriles has refused to recognize the election result. Only 300,000 votes separated the two candidates after Sunday’s vote, with Maduro placed by the commission on 50.7 percent of the vote compared to 49.1 percent for Capriles. … The 40-year-old opposition leader, who also drew support from Venezuelan expats in the United States, had accused Venezuelan authorities of pressuring civil servants to vote for Maduro. …

Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles resumed his campaign today in the western part of the country. He faces off with interim president Nicolás Maduro on April 14, reported dpa news. … “Not a single drop of oil is going to go for funding the government of the Castros in Cuba. Mr. Castro uses Venezuelans, our people, so that government is enriched… Nicolas is the candidate of the Castros. I am the candidate of Venezuela and Venezuelans,” said Capriles. He said that socialism in Venezuela is no longer viable with the death of Hugo Chávez. Maduro claims just the opposite, saying...

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan acting President Nicolas Maduro said on Wednesday that "far right" figures in the United States were plotting to kill opposition leader Henrique Capriles. "We have detected plans by the far-right, linked to the groups of (former Bush administration officials) Roger Noriega and Otto Reich, to make an attempt against the opposition presidential candidate," Maduro said in a televised speech.

Shortly after Hugo Chávez won his first election as Venezuelan president in December 1998, a lawyer from the western state of Barinas, which was then governed by Chávez's father, delivered a prescient warning to Newsweek magazine: "Venezuelans are dreaming of a savior, but Chávez is a dictator. People don't know what they are getting."  More than 14 years later, a cancer-stricken Chávez is reportedly near death, but his autocratic legacy is very much alive. Venezuela long ago ceased to be a real democracy: The ruling regime effectively controls the Supreme Court (which in 2004 was expanded and packed with Chávez allies), the National Assembly...

Anything is possible in Venezuela’s elections Sunday,but there is a good chance that opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski will do better than any of his predecessors in the polls,and that—win or lose—he will put President Hugo Chavez’s 14-year-old regime against the ropes. There is a plausible scenario that even if Capriles loses by a narrow margin,a good showing in Sunday’s election will allow him to keep the opposition unified,and to become a viable alternative to a president who may have terminal cancer, and who has no successor who could beat Capriles. Under Venezuela’s constitution,if the president dies within the first...

......Venezuela's military is constitutionally neutral but Chavez has packed its leadership with loyalists. That has raised questions about whether the armed forces would remain neutral if the results of Sunday's elections are in dispute.....

With just one month left before Venezuelans go to the ballot box, a survey of recent opinion polls shows significant leads for Hugo Chávez in the race to be Venezuela’s next president.The average of all 13 polls carried out in August and in the first week of September, saw Hugo Chávez on 51% and Henrique Capriles on 35% giving Chávez an average lead of 16% (See table 1).Such a lead would translate into an advantage of more than two million votes for Hugo Chávez on October 7th.  

........In Venezuela's presidential elections on Sunday, Mr Capriles faces one of the toughest challenges in global politics - defeating Hugo Chavez. The socialist autocrat dominates the airwaves and is tapping the state's deep oil coffers to fund his campaign and "buy" votes with a calculated explosion of investment in populist social programme in the weeks before the vote. But despite its energy riches, the country is mired in debt and unemployment as state-imposed price and exchange rate controls shackle the economy. And violent crime is so endemic that Caracas has the unenviable ranking of the murder capital of the world....

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) -- President Hugo Chavez announced Thursday that Venezuelan security forces have arrested a U.S. citizen and suspect he is a mercenary who could be involved in an alleged plot to destabilize the country if the opposition's candidate loses the upcoming presidential election. Chavez said the Hispanic man was detained Aug. 4 while crossing into Venezuela from Colombia. The president said the man was carrying a U.S. passport with entrance and exit stamps from countries including Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya as well as a notebook containing geographical coordinates. The man's identity was not released. Chavez did not say...

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez maintained a 15 percentage-point lead over his opposition rival Henrique Capriles in a closely watched poll published on Monday, less than three months ahead of an Oct. 7 presidential election. The June survey by respected local pollster Datanalisis showed 46.1 percent of voters backing Chavez and 30.8 percent for Capriles, while the rest were undecided or did not respond. Chavez is seeking a new six-year term at the helm of South America's biggest oil exporter, but he has been battling cancer for a year and not able to match the intensive campaigning of his younger opponent,...

Much like Fidel Castro, his ideological soulmate, Hugo Chávez is fond of denouncing his critics as “fascists” and “Nazis,” regardless of whether those critics are U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill, heads of state in Europe, or opposition presidential candidates in Venezuela. Yet in his militarization of society, his promulgation of chauvinistic nationalism, and (above all) his persistent use of anti-Semitic demagoguery, Chávez himself is much closer to 1930s-style fascism than any of his democratic opponents. Consider the ongoing efforts to smear Henrique Capriles, the man who will represent the Coalition for Democratic Unity (MUD) in Venezuela’s October 2012 presidential election....

There is concern in Venezuela about the direction the country is moving politically, and Venezuelan governor Henrique Capriles is beginning to represent hope for opposition groups. As mayor of Caracas, Henrique was targeted by the administration for not doing enough to suppress protests against the Cuban embassy in 2002, and was charged with fomenting violence; a charge that may have been intended to remove him as political competition. At least a third of Venezuelans currently support opposition candidates according to recent polls, and many Venezuelans left the country since Chavez came to power, and even more after a failed referendum...