Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido and a rival lawmaker, Luis Parra, backed by socialist leader Nicolas Maduro, both claimed to be the country's parliament speaker after two separate votes and accusations of a "parliamentary coup."
Security forces with riot shields blocked Guaido on Sunday from entering the National Assembly chamber where he was expected to be re-elected head of the opposition-dominated legislature. Instead, Parra proclaimed himself speaker after claiming to have been elected with 81 votes in the 167-member chamber.
Opposition lawmakers later re-elected Guaido in a hastily arranged session at the headquarters of El Nacional newspaper, the last remaining newspaper in Caracas critical of Maduro and his ruling Socialist party. A tally showed that 100 of parliament's 167 legislators voted in Guaido's favor.
"We defeated the dictatorship again, we overwhelmingly defeated the dictatorship, the ambitions of the dictatorship," Guaido said after his supporters re-elected him.
Guaido has led the opposition to President Maduro since the National Assembly elected him speaker and in that role he declared himself acting president on January 23, 2019, after parliament had called Maduro a "usurper."
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo reiterated U.S. support of Guaido and said officials supporting Maduro are trying to "destroy the last democratic institution in Venezuela, the National Assembly." He described the session in which Parra claimed himself speaker as a "farcical vote'" and said no quorum was present.
The European Union also said it would continue to recognize Guaido, while Argentina criticized blocking Guaido from the National Assembly.
"To impede by force the functioning of the legislative assembly is to condemn oneself to international isolation," Argentina's Foreign Minister Felipe Sola said on Twitter.
Russia argued that the vote to elect Parr was a democratic action.
"We consider the election of the new leadership of parliament to be the result of a legitimate democratic procedure," Russia's Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
Parra is one of several lawmakers who recently broke away from Guaido. He has since been expelled from his party for alleged involvement in a corruption scandal involving Maduro.
Guaido is recognized by the United States and nearly 60 other countries as the legitimate president of Venezuela.
Guaido's international backing rests on the fact that, as assembly president, he is Venezuela's highest-ranking official to have been democratically elected.
Opposition lawmakers hold 112 seats in Venezuela's National Assembly of 167 seats.
