REPORT: Venezuela lawmakers brawl amid post-election tensions

       
Members of Venezuela's National Assembly say post-election tensions set off a brawl between lawmakers that left one opposition assembly member badly bruised and bleeding.          

Video from inside the National Assembly showed opposition politicians unfurling a banner and then a fight breaking out between legislators.          

One opposition assembly member told The Associated Press that pro-government legislators threw punches on Tuesday night after members of his coalition tried to protest a proposal barring them from legislative activities.        

Assembly member Julio Borges appeared on an independent television station soon after with blood running down one side of his swollen face.        

Borges said he blamed President of the National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, for the fight.           

"The responsibility lies directly with Diosdado Cabello who embodies the hate, repression, the fascism that he wants to accuse the rest of the country of and who doesn't recognize what's nothing more than a repression of our country on April 14," he said.          

The opposition has refused to accept President Nicolas Maduro's narrow April 14 victory, prompting the pro-government side to try to bar them from the assembly.          

Maduro responded to the brawl by saying that the opposition was there to provoke a fight.          

"They tell us that, and we knew, that the opposition came to provoke violence and there was a fierce exchange of blows," he said.       

He also said that he had spoken with Cabello and that discipline was going to be restored to the National Assembly.         

"We have to pursue peace, coexistence, respect for the constitution, laws, ideas and tolerance," Maduro told the audience, to applause.                 

Tuesday's fight was the second in which opposition legislators said the other side attacked them.


To watch the full report, please click on the VIDEO above


AP