National Assembly deferred second discussion of the Amnesty Law for Democratic Coexistence

Published at: 12/02/2026 05:10 PM

The National Assembly (AN) decided to postpone until the next session the continuation of the second discussion of the Amnesty for Democratic Coexistence bill, in accordance with the provisions of article 106 of the Internal Regulations and Debates of the Venezuelan parliament.

The president of the AN, Jorge Rodríguez, submitted for consideration the proposal of the opposition block, which objected to the drafting of article number 7, which required the legal presentation of those who committed crimes and escaped, to be beneficiaries of the amnesty.

Faced with the debate on this article, Rodríguez called several deputies, including Jorge Arreaza, president of the Commission; Deputy Carolina Pérez, Stanlin González, Pedro Carreño and Rubén Lima to reach a consensus, so the unanimous vote of the plenary approved continuing the discussion in the regular session next week.

Until then, the plenary had unanimously approved six articles of the Project. Before starting the debate, article by article, the president of the Special Commission on the Law of Amnesty for Democratic Coexistence, Deputy Jorge Arreaza, reported the details of the public consultation that took place throughout the national territory.

He specified that the Act has received 2,700 written proposals from various social sectors, “contributions continue to arrive”.

He added that the commission has carried out intense territorial work, with meetings and assemblies in each state of the country, to collect proposals that strengthen the legal instrument.

“In these six days of work, we have attended countless meetings and assemblies. We settled on Friday, February 6 and immediately deployed around the territory receiving proposals; we listened to every suggestion, every testimony, every contribution,” he said.

As part of the debate prior to article 7, the deputy Iris Varela responded directly to her predecessor in the word, the opposition deputy Luis Florido, who had “warned” that his parliamentary block would not validate the proposed wording of article 7, because it forces the beneficiary to put himself in law, which, according to him, would make him “guilty in some way”.

Florido requested to leave the wording “as far as we considered it to be able to approve it unanimously, or, otherwise, we would have to save the vote”.

Varela considered it regrettable that, despite the spirit of coexistence offered by this law, there are voices that insist on ignoring the fact that, in Venezuela, for years there have been attacks against the Venezuelan State, the laws, the constitution and the life of the people.

“It's such a grotesque manipulation that they portray them as if they were victims of the Venezuelan State. They are not victims of the Venezuelan State,” he emphasized, recalling that the real victims of the violence they caused are others, such as Orlando Figuera, burned alive in Altamira.

The deputy said that peace in Venezuela was achieved thanks to President Nicolás Maduro Moros, who convened the National Constituent Assembly (ANC) in 2017 to restore tranquility. “And that's why there is peace in the country, a peace that they have repeatedly wanted to violate in different episodes.”

He recalled the coup d'etat in 2002 against then-President Hugo Chávez, then with the oil strike that murdered Venezuelans in the streets, in the 2013 elections, then the terrible five-year period of the contumacious Assembly from 2015 to 2020, which extended the period and collected stolen resources, and continued violence with the murderous guarimbas for several years.

“So, here it seems that no one wants to recognize the crimes they have committed,” he claimed, in addition to stressing that the bombs thrown by the United States government against Venezuela, on January 3, were the product of the behavior of violent nationals who have supported this.

“Who is responsible for the deaths in the country? Where are the victims? Are they the ones who are in detention or are they the ones who died? , because when we talk about victims, the process of violence that has taken place since the 2002 coup by the right and extreme right opposition is unknown,” he exclaimed.

Varela concluded that whoever seeks an amnesty is because they have committed crimes; otherwise, he would not need it.

Mazo News Team