Maduro Picks Hardliner to Run Economy, Opposition Seeks Bank Control

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has appointed 39-year-old Luis Salas Rodríguez to serve as his government's vice president of the economy.

Salas' appointment will likely further cement the price and currency controls that have affected Venezuelans' daily lives for more than a decade, The Associated Press reported.

The opposition's new majority in Venezuela's National Assembly likely prompted Maduro to double down on the socialist economic policies, which he has championed just like his late mentor and predecessor, Hugo Chávez.

Salas is considered a hardliner within the Maduro administration. He has frequently blamed the United States for the world's worst recession and triple-digit inflation affecting Venezuela. As a professor at the Bolivarian University, he has previously argued Washington and local business interests have been trying to sabotage Chávez and Maduro's attempts to create a socialist economy.

His appointment is part of a Cabinet reshuffle Maduro has undertaken following the defeat of his United Socialist Party of Venezuela in the Dec. 6, 2015 legislative elections. During a ceremony in Caracas, the president praised his new vice president as a key thinker within his movement, El País noted.

"We are faced with a new economic emergency, and in the next few days I will unveil a rescue plan," Maduro promised. "[Salas] knows how to work in a team and has studied the phenomena of rent-seeking and the phenomena of the 'economic war' in great depth."

The new, opposition-controlled National Assembly, meanwhile, embarked on efforts to limit Maduro's decision-making power on economic matters, Reuters reported. Lawmakers are trying to bring Venezuela's central bank under legislative control.

In a post-election decree, the president recently did away with the parliament's oversight of the nomination and removal processes for central bank directors, a move the opposition bloc is now attempting to overturn.

"It's the first thing we are going to present (on economic matters), because it's the most immediate and the easiest," said Jose Guerra, an economist and former bank director expected to serve on the new legislature's finance commission.