Venezuela’s chief prosecutor has called the country’s people to reject President Nicolás Maduro’s push to rewrite the nation’s constitution and urged the supreme court to annul the process immediately, further deepening her divide with the government.

Grasping a copy of the blue constitution book in her hands on the steps of the supreme court, Luisa Ortega Díaz said she was acting to defend both the embattled nation’s constitution and its very democracy.

“What’s at play here is the country,” she said. “The integrity of Venezuelans.”

Ortega Díaz’s remarks were her strongest repudiation yet of Maduro’s effort to convoke a national assembly that would rewrite the nation’s constitution, an act she said would overturn the achievements of the late President Hugo Chávez, who oversaw adoption of the current constitution.

“I think with this [assembly] we are destroying President Chavez’s legacy,” Ortega said.

A long-time government loyalist, Ortega Díaz first broke publicly with the Maduro administration in late March when she decried a supreme court decision nullifying congress.

Venezuela opposition blasts president's plan to rewrite constitution and delay elections Read more

Since then, the gulf between Ortega Díaz and the government has only grown. In both writing and statements to the press, she has repeatedly questioned the legal validity of convoking a constitutional assembly without a referendum.

Maduro ordered the national electoral council to convene the assembly, stating it was his constitutional right, a position the opposition rejects. He also submitted the terms outlining how the constituent members would be elected. The government-stacked council quickly approved both requests and is moving forward to hold the elections in late July.

Ortega Díaz requested that the supreme court’s electoral chamber declare invalid the national electoral council’s decisions approving the constitutional assembly.

In doing so, she sidestepped the court’s constitutional branch, whose magistrates were responsible for the March decision to strip the opposition-controlled national assembly of its last powers.

That decision was later reversed amid a storm of international outcry and Ortega Díaz’s own rebuke. But it instigated the current wave of protests that has left nearly 70 people dead and continues to rock the country.

Demonstrators are frustrated with the nation’s vast food and medical supply shortages, triple-digit inflation and rising crime.

Ortega denounced the “ferocious repression” of anti-Maduro protests. “Those opposed to the assembly are called traitors, fascists, terrorists – we cannot live in a country like that,” Ortega said.

On the frontline of Venezuela's punishing protests Read more

The latest fatality from the unrest was 17-year-old protester Neomar Lander, who died during clashes with security forces in Caracas on Wednesday.

The government said Lander died when a homemade mortar exploded in his hands while hundreds of youths faced off with national guard troops in the Venezuelan capital. Some opposition lawmakers, however, said he was killed by a teargas canister fired straight at him.

The Trump administration slapped sanctions in May on the supreme court’s president as well as seven justices from the constitutional branch who issued the controversial decision. The court’s constitutional chamber has declared null and void eight national assembly laws between January and October 2016, after just one such ruling in the previous 200 years, legal experts say.

Ortega Díaz accused the national electoral council of breaking key democratic principles such as universal suffrage in approving Maduro’s request to convene the constitutional assembly. Maduro’s terms call for allotting a specific number of votes to specific population sectors such as the disabled, fishermen and retirees, as well as one per municipality. Analysts say those terms will heavily favor the government.

“The appeal I am attempting is to defend the rule of the people,” she said.