President Nicolas Maduro recently announced a much anticipated "big shake-up," a series of changes in the structure of the Executive Cabinet involving the merger of ministries, the creation of other offices, the appointment and dismissal of several ministers, creating six vice-five new areas to which he called "revolutions."
Though for many, the so-called "big shake-up" was more of a reshuffling of the same characters.
In national radio and television late at night on the night of Sept. 2, the president said that "it is time" for further action as part of "the new stage of the revolution." He also ruled out any "capitalist" solution and declared his economic policy "successful."
The biggest change in the new cabinet was the sidelining of the only cabinet member proposing substantial change. Maduro announced the removal of Rafael Ramirez Ministry of Petroleum and head of the state-owned Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), posts he held for a decade. Ramirez was named vice president for political sovereignty and foreign minister.
Asdrubal Chavez, cousin of the late president Hugo Chavez, replaced Ramirez as the new minister of petroleum, and the engineer Eulogio del Pino is the new head of PDVSA.
Maduro called on Venezuelans' "full support" to undertake the renovation of government.
However, analysts doubt that the measures are sufficient to overcome the economic crisis in Venezuela characterized by rampant inflation, severe shortages and declining production in some sectors due to lack of basic materials and supplies. Inflation in May reached an annualized rate of 60.9 percent, one of the highest rates for two decades.
In addition to the ministerial changes, Maduro is expected to announce a series of economic adjustments in the coming weeks.
For Maduro -- whose popularity reached its lowest in July, standing at 35.4 percent, according to the latest polls -- the enforcement of any adjustment measure might affect the chances of victory of the ruling party in the parliamentary elections planned for next year, analysts say.
Colombia turns opposition students over to Maduro government
Colombian authorities deported two Venezuelan opposition students and handed them to Venezuelan authorities, causing an outcry from former Colombian president Alvaro Uribe and members of the Colombian Senate.
The students Lorent Gomez Saleh and Gabriel Valles were deported last week by Colombian immigration services and were immediately arrested when they entered Venezuela for violating probation and are still detained.
After days of not knowing where the students were being held, they finally turned up in court in a court in the coastal city of Valencia on Monday, which revoked their bail, which they have since 2010, arguing the students violated an order banning them from leaving the central state of Carabobo, in charges related to a judicial process that has been pending over them for participating in street protests that year.
"Today we make President Juan Manuel Santos responsible of any outrage against the life, dignity and integrity of the student leaders Lorent Saleh and Gabriel Valles, young defenders of freedom and democracy in Venezuela and Latin America," said in a statement the Youth Movement of the Democratic Center party led by Uribe.
The message added that the delivery of the two students shows president Santos's government's "complicity ... with the Nicolas Maduro regime" to "quiet ... the cry for freedom of those who claim the respect of human rights" in Venezuela.
On Tuesday, in the Colombian Senate, members of the Democratic Center party held up signs that read: "Sorry Venezuela ... #SOSLorent."
The Director of Immigration in Colombia, Sergio Bueno, said Monday to the Colombian radio station Caracol Radio that "migratory factors" led to the expulsion of Gómez Saleh and Valleys, and denied that the case responds to political persecution.
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