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The American government was thrilled by the landslide victory of the Venezuelan opposition in last December’s parliamentary election. But Latin America hands at the State Department couldn’t have been thrilled to learn the new speaker of Venezuela’s assembly is the veteran opposition leader Henry Ramos Allup.

About a decade ago, the American embassy in Caracas issued a cable conveying a scathing assessment of Mr. Ramos and dim hopes for the country’s then-beleaguered opposition under his leadership.

His party, Acción Democrática, the cable said, is “going nowhere fast,” partly because its leader is “unimaginative, overconfident and even repellent.” For good measure, the cable’s author also called Mr. Ramos “crude, abrasive, arrogant and thin-skinned.”

The embassy cable, which was among the government documents made public by WikiLeaks in 2010, chided Mr. Ramos’s party for spending too much time seeking money from the international community and not enough time courting potential voters. “When refused by one Embassy official, they ask another,” the cable said.

Mr. Ramos was not in a conciliatory mood during this week’s rambunctious opening session of parliament. Making dismissive hand gestures, he directed workers to remove posters of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and his hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro, from the national assembly hall.

The Venezuelan opposition has been beset by infighting and ideological differences since Mr. Chávez, a socialist leader, took power in 1999. Opposition leaders banded together last year in an effort to wrest control of parliament from Mr. Maduro’s party.

The opposition remains a fractious bunch. Some have argued that the new leaders in parliament should attempt to find common ground with Mr. Maduro’s government to address the country’s economic crisis and other pressing problems. Others, including Mr. Ramos, want to focus on ousting Mr. Maduro. During the opening session of parliament, Mr. Ramos announced that the opposition will seek to remove Mr. Maduro from office within six months.