National Assembly of Venezuela

The National Assembly of Venezuela serves as the country's unicameral legislative body, responsible for drafting, debating, and enacting national laws. It operates from its headquarters in Caracas, Venezuela, and represents the entire Venezuelan populace across all states and municipalities. As the supreme legislative authority, it approves the national budget, ratifies international treaties, and oversees the actions of the executive branch to ensure constitutional compliance. Its members are elected through a mixed‑member proportional system that combines direct constituency votes with party‑list representation, aiming to balance geographic and ideological diversity. The Assembly also holds the power to initiate constitutional amendments and to impeach high‑ranking officials, underscoring its central role in Venezuela's system of checks and balances. In addition to lawmaking, it conducts public hearings and investigations that address matters of national importance, ranging from economic policy to human rights.

On August 6, 2017, the National Assembly was among approximately forty Venezuelan government and state‑backed websites targeted by the hacker group known as The Binary Guardians. The attackers disrupted services and defaced the sites with protest messages that included excerpts from Charlie Chaplin's film 'The Great Dictator,' expressing solidarity with anti‑government demonstrations. The group framed its actions as digital resistance intended to support street protests against the administration and portrayed the Supreme Court as an extension of the ruling authority. They claimed a global presence and signalled intentions for future attacks while emphasizing their role in amplifying civilian dissent. The cyber incident coincided with a military raid on an army base carried out by opposition figures seeking to challenge the government. As a branch of the Venezuelan state, the National Assembly is not owned by any private parent company nor does it hold subsidiaries; it is funded and administered directly by the national government. Its institutional status places it within the broader framework of Venezuela's public sector, where it functions alongside the executive and judicial branches to uphold the rule of law.