Who would attemot to take over presidentcy in venezula if it is not the vice president

1. Constitutional succession: the National Assembly speaker is the legal fallback

Article 233 and related constitutional provisions have been read by legal scholars to make the president of the National Assembly the next constitutional actor to assume executive functions if the presidency is vacated and the vice president cannot or will not do so, a reading invoked during past crises and endorsed in legal analyses of the 2019 dispute ^{[1] [2]}.

2. The vice president’s absence magnifies institutional ambiguity

Although the executive vice president is formally first in the succession line, Venezuela’s polarized politics and parallel institutions mean that the absence or disqualification of the vice president immediately opens space for competing interpretations of legitimacy and for nonconstitutional actors to press claims—an observation echoed in reporting on the immediate aftermath of sudden removals or foreign interventions ^{[7] [8] [5]}.

3. Opposition claimants: exiled victors and barred candidates

Prominent opposition figures who have been floated as de facto or aspirant successors include Edmundo González, who is reported as the opposition’s 2024 presidential winner in exile and a likely candidate to assert a claim, and María Corina Machado, a leading opposition figure who has been barred domestically but remains influential internationally and politically within anti-Chavista circles ^{[3] [4] [9]}.

4. The military: the decisive domestic power broker

Multiple analysts and news accounts stress that when formal succession rules collide with a power vacuum, the armed forces become the central actor: their recognition, acquiescence or fragmentation determines who can effectively govern, and experts warn that a foreign-enabled removal of a sitting president makes institutional continuity far less predictable because the military’s internal calculations, not just the constitution, will shape outcomes ^{[5] [6]}.

5. International recognition and foreign actors reshape the contest

Past years show that external recognition—by the United States, European Union, regional states or blocs—can confer de jure legitimacy on one claimant and create parallel claims to authority; legal and diplomatic maneuvers (as during the Guaidó interregnum) demonstrate how foreign backing interacts with domestic institutions to produce contested governance rather than clean constitutional succession ^{[10] [1] [11]}.

6. Practical contenders beyond the text: what would actually attempt to take power

Combining constitutional order with political realities, three types of actors would attempt to take over if the vice president did not do so: the president of the National Assembly asserting constitutional temporary powers ^[2]; opposition leaders or exile-based winners like Edmundo González and María Corina Machado mobilizing domestic and international support to claim legitimacy ^{[3] [4]}; and military or chavista institutional figures who could either back a constitutional successor, install an interim junta, or prop up a different PSUV-aligned leader—each path reported as plausible in recent coverage ^{[5] [8] [6]}.

7. Risk assessment and likely outcomes

Reporting converges on three likely outcomes rather than a single clean transfer: a constitutionally framed but contested handover to the National Assembly speaker, a contested claim by prominent opposition figures seeking international and domestic recognition, or a de facto seizure of authority by military or party elites that produces either a caretaker regime or chaotic fragmentation—each scenario carries high risks of unrest and competing claims to legitimacy ^{[1] [3] [5]}.

Conclusion

The formal answer is that the president of the National Assembly is the constitutional successor if the vice president does not assume power ^[2], but the practical struggle for the presidency in Venezuela routinely involves opposition claimants such as Edmundo González and María Corina Machado, the armed forces as the decisive domestic broker, and foreign governments whose recognition can legitimize one claimant over another—making any vacancy a contest between law, force, and international politics rather than a single automatic transition ^{[1] [3] [5] [10]}.