SOCIALIST election candidates in Venezuela have launched a challenge to the return of eight new right-wing MPs, potentially overturning the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) supermajority.

 

The Supreme Court said on Tuesday that it had received motions from United Socialist Party (PSUV) candidates who lost out in this month’s elections to the National Assembly, but did not disclose their 

argument.

 

On his weekly TV programme, President Nicolas Maduro accused the MUD of “playing dirty” and threatened to release evidence of vote-buying and other electoral fraud.

 

If upheld, the challenges would deny the right-wing MUD alliance an effective two-thirds parliamentary majority allowing it to amend the constitution without a referendum or to trigger a presidential recall vote.

 

MUD leaders denounced the involvement of the Supreme Court, which they claim is controlled by pro-PSUV judges, and called on foreign countries to intervene.

 

“You can’t use legal tricks to steal something the voters didn’t want to give you,” MUD secretary-general Jesus Torrealba told a press conference with several of his MPs.

 

“We’re not living in a functional democracy. We’re living in a country where you can be surer about the operating hours of a liquor store than the elections tribunal of the Supreme Court.”

 

Mr Torrealba called for MUD activists to enter the National Assembly chamber along with deputies when they are sworn in on January 5.

 

Mr Maduro also announced a raft of new laws, including the extension of measures banning employers from firing workers without just cause for another three years.

 

“The people have someone who will protect them,” he said, accusing the MUD and its supporters overseas of waging “economic war” on the poor.

 

Other decrees passed under Venezuela’s rarely-used enabling Act include creating the Popular Council of State, intended to give workers a direct say in government, and the transferral of late president Hugo Chavez’s body from the Mountain Barracks to the foundation named after him.

 

Mr Maduro also called a special national congress of supporters in late January to define the next steps for the Bolivarian revolution.