Thursday, July 17, 2025

Story Post: Kleptocrats Ensnare Venezuela’s Asamblea Nationale

The December 1999 rewrite of Venezuela’s constitution replaced the bicameral legislature with a unified one called the Asamblea Nationale. Due in part to an opposition party boycott, on July 30, 2000, the Fifth Republic Movement took a majority of the seats. They used their newly unchecked power to revoke the autonomy of state-owned oil company PDVSA, and seized enough of its revenue to pay their political allies that it became financially unsound despite its legal privileges. Their ability to direct oil revenue to buy votes allowed them to maintain long-term power and to nationalize and plunder most of Venezuela’s large industrial enterprises .

posted by JonathanDark at 17 Jul 2025 18:53:00 UTC Comments (6)

Comments

Bucky:

17-07-2025 19:29:22 UTC

Score 3 as I’m treating “Asamblea Nationale” as proper noun abuse rather than foreign language content, but this is otherwise a 5 for being a natural backronym that fits the prompt well.

Josh: he/they

17-07-2025 19:40:10 UTC

@Bucky Venezuela is also a proper noun.

Still: Score 3. I agree that that’s a slightly overworked number of proper nouns, although I admire the appropriacy of the context.

Bucky:

17-07-2025 19:42:34 UTC

Yeah, and I deducted two points for proper noun abuse rather than my normal one.

Trapdoorspyder: he/him

17-07-2025 19:44:25 UTC

Score 3 - this is a pretty clunky acronym for the tongue, but the actual event is really interesting

Darknight: he/him

18-07-2025 00:31:33 UTC

Score 3, clunky acronym sure… interesting event, yes. This round has brought some fun’s facts to my eyes

aria: she/they

18-07-2025 01:59:14 UTC

Score 3. Interesting, but too many proper nouns.

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