##DECEMBER 2020
Unsurprisingly, the opposition-dominated National Assembly has seen the Democratic Unity Roundtable continue to hold control.
Meanwhile, the Grand Patriotic Pole dominated Constituent National Assembly, which holds de facto supreme control over the country, had its mandated extended to 2024.
Clashes between supporters of the Grand Patriotic Pole and the Democratic Unity Roundtable flared up all across December, with protests lasting into January 2021. Overall however, President Maduro and the Constituent National Assembly firmly holds onto power, with support of its allies in Cuba, Russia, and China. Even as Western powers and much of South America continues to put pressure onto the Venezuelan government with their support to the opposition, the Grand Patriotic Pole holds on.
"In my conception of (the) state where people of different religions live there is no place for religion in the state. Its position must be neutral: no bias for any religion. If necessary, it should help all the religions equally. No question of concession or tolerance to any religion. It smacks of inferiority complex. The state must respect all religions: no smiling face for one and askance look to the other. The state religion is a dangerous principle. Previous instances are sufficient to warn us not to repeat the blunder. We know people were burnt alive in the name of religion. Therefore, my conception is that sovereignty must rest with the people and not with anybody else....[T]he words "equal rights as enunciated by Islam" are—I do not use any other word—a camouflage. It is only a hoax to us, non-Muslims. There cannot be equal rights as enunciated by Islam. It goes without saying that by introducing the religious question, the differences between the majority and the minority are being perpetuated, for how long, nobody knows. And, as apprehended by us, the difficulty of interpretation has already arisen. The accepted principle is that the majority, by their fair treatment, must create confidence in the minority. Whereas the Honorable mover of the resolution promises respect, in place of charity or sufferance for the minority community the deputy minister, Dr. Qureshi, advises the minority to win the goodwill of the majority by their behavior. In the House of the Legislature also we find that, while the prime minister keeps perfectly to his dictum, others cannot brook that the opposition should function in the spirit of opposition. The demand is that the opposition should remain submissive. That is Dr. Qureshi's way of thinking. The minorities must be grateful for all the benevolence they get and must never complain about the malevolence that may also be dealt out to them. That is his solution to the minority problem."
'On the 1st of December, the Commission of Fundamental Rights received the president and secretary of the Chilean Basic Income Network (Red Chilena de Ingreso Básico) Gabriela Cabaña and Cristóbal Ramos. The intervention included the justifications of basic income as a right that should be guaranteed in the new constitutional order, as part of a wider re-articulation of the state. It also included legal considerations and different ways in which Chile’s current legal order supports the constitutional consecration of a basic income. The presenters also answered questions from members of the Convention.
The constitutional convention will present a new constitution for national approval via referendum next year. You can watch the full intervention (in Spanish) here.
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