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Chavez to Pack High Court Prior to Recall Vote
EFL - NYTimes Requires Reg...
BOGOTÁ, Colombia, June 17 - The government of President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela is poised to pack the Supreme Court with allies who could decide in favor of the president if an August recall referendum on his rule is as close and contested as expected, an American-based human rights group said Thursday.
Learning from AlGore and the Donks
A new law signed by Mr. Chávez in May expanded the Supreme Court to 32 from 20 members. It also permits pro-government representatives in the National Assembly to use their slim majority to appoint and remove justices, instead of obtaining a two-thirds majority as was common practice before, according to a Human Rights Watch report released in Caracas on Thursday. The 12 new justices will probably be appointed in July. But the National Assembly applied the law already, on Tuesday, by annulling the tenure of the court’s vice president, Franklin Arrieche, who had voted to acquit military officers involved in a 2002 coup against Mr. Chávez. The government and its allies, including three members of the five-member National Electoral Council, have also called for restricting or even barring the Organization of American States and the Atlanta-based Carter Center from monitoring the vote, set to take place Aug. 15.

The developments come as the government, fending off the latest challenge from a determined opposition, embarks on a campaign of intense social spending fueled by rising oil revenues. But political analysts say that if Mr. Chávez cannot win the recall outright, his government could count on the Supreme Court to ensure victory if the referendum results are close or disputed. Officials in the attorney general’s office said they could not comment on the new law, called the Organic Law of the Supreme Court, until they read Human Right Watch’s 24-page report. Representatives at Miraflores, the presidential palace, did not return calls seeking comment. But a supporter of the law in the National Assembly, Eustoquio Contreras, and the Venezuelan ambassador in Washington, Bernardo Álvarez, said the new law was part of the government’s efforts to make a system once riddled with corruption more efficient. The new measure allowing the National Assembly to make appointments by a simple majority, they said, is aimed at easing the logjam that has made appointing judges difficult. "The problem we’ve had in Congress is there has been a process of jamming the game," Mr. Álvarez said of the country’s tangled and politically polarized legislative process. "That is why we had to change the process in the Congress."

But José Miguel Vivanco, the Americas director for Human Rights Watch, characterized the new law as a political takeover of the judiciary similar to the remaking of the legal system of Peru by Alberto K. Fujimori and the packing of the Supreme Court in Argentina by Carlos Menem when the two were in office. Both men are now in exile, avoiding corruption charges in their countries.
Hopefully, Hugo will join them someday. But I suspect it won't be anytime too soon...
"If nobody reacts now, tomorrow will be too late," Mr. Vivanco said in an interview earlier this week. "The 32 justices of the Supreme Court will start ruling, and it will be impossible to question those rulings." In Venezuela, judicial autonomy has already been severely limited by the firing of judges who have ruled against the government by the six-member judicial commission of the Supreme Court, said Mr. Vivanco. Human Rights Watch also says that the vast majority of judges in Venezuela are not allowed to obtain tenure, thereby intimidating them from making difficult decisions. "The executive has penetrated the judicial system," Miguel Luna, a judge recently fired after issuing a decision the government did not like, said in a phone interview. "Autonomy has been lost in our justice system."
Posted by: Frank G 2004-06-18
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=35809