Venezuela rebels win supermajority in Assembly

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Electoral authorities in Venezuela said the opposition coalition won a key two-thirds majority in the National Assembly in legislative voting.

The National Electoral Council has published on its website the final tally of results from Sunday's elections showing two previously undecided races had broken in favor of the opposition, giving them 112 of 167 seats in the incoming National Assembly.

The ruling socialist party and its allies got 55 seats.

The supermajority gives the opposition a strong hand in trying to wrest power from President Nicolas Maduro after 17 years of socialist rule. It has the potential votes to sack Supreme Court justices, initiate a referendum to revoke Maduro's mandate and even convoke an assembly to rewrite Hugo Chavez's 1999 constitution.

The scale of the political earthquake was such that socialists lost even in Chavez's home state of Barinas, where Adan Chavez is one of several family members holding high office. In the capital, the opposition won by almost 20 percentage points, prevailing even in the 23rd of January slum where a mausoleum holds the remains of Chavez, revered by the poor as their "invincible commander."

It also was a blow to Latin America's left, which gained power in the wake of Chavez's ascent but has struggled recently in the face of a region-wide economic slowdown and voter fatigue in some countries with rampant corruption.

Last month, Argentines rejected the chosen successor of President Cristina Fernandez, herself a Chavez ally, turning instead to the relatively conservative mayor of Buenos Aires.

And In Brazil, President Dilma Rousseff is battling impeachment over a corruption scandal in her long-ruling Workers' Party.