Venezuela’s acting president names new defense chief to replace longtime Maduro loyalist

Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Venezuela’s act­ing Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­dríguez an­nounced a ma­jor Cab­i­net shake-up Wednes­day with the ap­point­ment of a new de­fense min­is­ter to re­place Gen. Vladimir Padri­no López, who had been a cor­ner­stone of the mil­i­tary’s long-stand­ing sup­port for for­mer Pres­i­dent Nicolás Maduro.

Ro­dríguez an­nounced the tran­si­tion on her Telegram chan­nel, say­ing the ap­point­ment of Gen. Gus­ta­vo González López to the role was ef­fec­tive im­me­di­ate­ly. She al­so thanked Padri­no López for his “loy­al­ty to the Home­land” and ex­pressed con­fi­dence in his fu­ture roles.

The an­nounce­ment comes more than ten weeks af­ter Ro­dríguez be­came act­ing head of state fol­low­ing the Jan. 3 U.S. mil­i­tary op­er­a­tion that cap­tured Maduro to put him on tri­al in the U.S. on drug traf­fick­ing charges.

The Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion has since ramped up pres­sure on the Maduro loy­al­ists cur­rent­ly gov­ern­ing the oil-rich na­tion.

González López has an ex­ten­sive in­tel­li­gence back­ground and faced U.S. sanc­tions for his role in crack­ing down on 2014 street protests. Since Jan. 6, when Ro­dríguez reshuf­fled her se­cu­ri­ty de­tail, he has served as com­man­der gen­er­al of the pres­i­den­tial ho­n­our guard and head of the mil­i­tary’s feared coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence agency.

Padri­no López was one of the longest-serv­ing Cab­i­net min­is­ters af­ter Maduro took of­fice in 2013 and one the coun­try’s longest-serv­ing de­fense min­is­ters fol­low­ing his ap­point­ment in 2014. —CARA­CAS, Venezuela (AP)