Dave Eberhart, NewsMax.com
Friday, June 18, 2004

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  Chavez is claiming a new law expanding the Venezuelan Supreme Court to 32 from 20 members is part of the government’s efforts to make the system more efficient, but his critics see a more nefarious motive, according to a report in the NY Times.

José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch, said the new law was tantamount to a political takeover of the judiciary. “If nobody reacts now, tomorrow will be too late. The 32 justices of the Supreme Court will start ruling, and it will be impossible to question those rulings.”

“The executive has penetrated the judicial system,” Miguel Luna, a judge recently fired after issuing a decision the government did not like, told the Times. “Autonomy has been lost in our justice system.”

Although the 12 new justices will most likely be appointed in July, the National Assembly has already applied the new law this week by nixing the tenure of the court’s vice president, Franklin Arrieche, who had voted to acquit military officers involved in a 2002 coup against Chávez.

The controversial new law also allows pro-Chavez representatives in the National Assembly to use their scant majority to appoint or remove justices – a departure from the former common practice of requiring a two-thirds majority.

Furthermore, the six-member judicial commission of the Supreme Court has a record of firing of judges who have ruled against the government.

Most judges in Venezuela are not allowed to obtain tenure, thereby intimidating them from making difficult decisions, reported the Times.

Meanwhile, traditional political process watchdog groups such as the Organization of American States and the Carter Center are being pushed aside from effective monitoring of the whole recall process.

Government officials and the electoral council seek to limit the role of foreign observers and in some cases are calling for the two organizations to be outright banned.

So far, the O.A.S., which is typically present at all major elections in Latin America, has thrown up its hands. Fernando Jaramillo, the organization’s chief of staff, said, “If they don’t give access to information, how do we do work, how do we observe?”

Diplomats in O.A.S. add that the group would be unable to accept an invitation under tight restrictions. Traditionally, the organization uses election observers and the collection of voting samples and is authorized to speak out if it detects corruption.

The Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Álvarez has defended the new law, saying that allowing the National Assembly to make appointments by a simple majority is simply aimed at pragmatics:

“The problem we’ve had in Congress is there has been a process of jamming the game. That is why we had to change the process in the Congress.”

But Human Rights Watch is rejecting all such arguments, calling on the O.A.S. to urge the Venezuelan government and the Supreme Court to quash the new law:

“A rule of law that relies on self-restraint of those with power is not, in fact, the rule of law,” a 24-page Human Rights Watch report concludes.

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