Venezuela’s National Aseembly Had a Brawl } We Are Waiting for US Congress to Join One of These Days. At Least The’ll be doing Something

  by HVpolitics

 Republicans and Democrats aren’t coming to blows. Check out the wild brawl that broke out on Tuesday in Venezuela’s National Assembly.

This isn’t the first time Venezuelan elected officials have engaged in fisticuffs — check out these parliamentary brawlers in 2011.

There’s nothing better than a good parliamentary brawl. Point of order? Yes, um, PUNCH. Ukraine likes to brawl. South Korea likes to brawl. Venezuela, as we said, likes to brawl! In Romania people just like to jump off balconies.

After the fight, opposition lawmaker Julio Borges arrived with a bruised face to his political party’s headquarters. Nasty wounds.

AP Photo/Fernando Llano

The Guardian has more on the cause of this week’s fight:

The opposition said seven of its parliamentarians were attacked and hurt when protesting against a measure that blocks them from speaking in the National Assembly because they have refused to recognise Nicolás Maduro’s 14 April election as president.

Government legislators blamed their “fascist” rivals for starting the violence, which illustrated the volatile state of politics after the death of socialist leader Hugo Chávez in March.

“We knew the opposition came to provoke violence,” Maduro said of the incident. “This must not be repeated.”

The 50-year-old Maduro, who was Chávez’s chosen successor, defeated opposition candidate Henrique Capriles by 1.5 percentage points. Capriles, 40, has refused to recognise his victory, alleging that thousands of irregularities occurred and the vote was “stolen”. The election exposed a nation evenly divided after 14 years of Chávez’s hardline socialist rule.

Wild stuff from Venezuela. We’ll update when we have more …