Venezuela's High Court Bans Congress From Removing Justices

[Eugene]

Source: Associated Press

Venezuela's High Court Bans Congress From Removing Justices

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
CARACAS, Venezuela — Mar 1, 2016, 5:23 PM ET

Venezuela's Supreme Court on Tuesday banned the congress from investigating the government's rushed appointment of 13 high court justices last year.

The ruling came just hours before lawmakers planned to debate the issue. It set up another likely clash between the opposition-controlled National Assembly and President Nicolas Maduro's socialist administration.

A lame duck government-controlled congress approved the appointment of 13 Supreme Court justices just before Christmas in a move that the opposition has said undermined its landslide victory in legislative elections.

The appointments filled vacancies left by justices who retired early. The opposition has said it has evidence that some of the justices were forced to quit under threat.

The Supreme Court said in its ruling that the National Assembly would be overstepping its authority if it attempted to remove or even review the appointments.

http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/venezuelas-high-court-bans-congress-removing-justices-37319506

[GGJohn]

1. The Supreme Court is ruling in favor of itself?

It's good to be the king.

[COLGATE4]

2. The Maduro regime is becoming almost comical in its

ham-handed attempts to thwart the will of the Venezuelan people in the recent Congressional elections. But with the daily-deteriorating economic conditions this type of buffoonery will not get a laugh but may well push the country towards a very dark place.

[bemildred]

3. Civil War anyone?

This is how it gets started? When the separate but equal powers decide that they are more equal? Take a look at Syria. That's what it looks like. We are heading in the same direction here in the USA, although with Scalia dead that danger is in abeyance for the moment.

[Marksman_91]

4. There's an article that came out from Caracas Chronicles that talks more in depth about this

The Opposite of Constitutional

http://caracaschronicles.com/2016/03/02/the-opposite-of-constitutional/

The Supreme Tribunal outdoes itself once more with a decision on the National Assembly's oversight powers that would have made George Orwell proud.

I remember reading Nineteen Eighty-Four as a teenager and thinking that while the novel was powerful, Orwell’s description of the cognitive gymnastics the party elite was expected to master was way over the top.

Orwell stressed that high party officials needed to commit wholeheartedly to Doublethink – the ability to hold directly contradictory ideas in their mind simultaneously and to accept both of them. This sounded to me dangerously close to the definition of schizophrenia. And it seemed far-fetched to me that a state run by crazy people could remain stable for long.

Fast forward 25 years to the Supreme Tribunal’s Constitutional Chamber yesterday, and 15-year-old Quico es un güebón. In yet another decision that adds more to their prontuario than to their jurisprudence, the Justices showed the terrifying prescience of Orwell’s vision.

The decision deals with the National Assembly’s oversight and subpoena powers, and by “deals with” I mean “sticks a knife in, then twists it.” This is not just about creatively qualifying and arbitrarily limiting the powers the Constitution reserves to the Assembly, this is about directly contradicting the plain meaning of the constitutional text.

The point that jumps out at me has to do with the Assembly’s subpoena powers. The constitution is anything but opaque on this point. Article 223 is, actually, entirely explicit.

Todos los funcionarios públicos o funcionarias publicas están obligados u obligadas, bajo las sanciones que establezca las leyes, a comparecer ante dichas Comisiones y a suministrar las informaciones y documentos que requieran para el cumplimiento de sus funciones. Esta obligación comprende también a los particulares; quedando a salvo los derechos y garantías que esta Constitución consagra.

All public employees are obligated, subject to the penalties established by law, to appear before the Assembly’s committees and to provide the information and the documents needed to accomplish its functions. This obligation includes also private individual; safeguarding the rights and guarantees this Constitution enshrines.

The language is sweeping, explicit and categorical. Ahí no hay pa donde coger. Right?

You’d think so. But you shouldn’t doublethink so.

In its decision yesterday, the court takes the simple, legible, straightforward, entirely plain meaning of Article 223 and shoots it full of holes. From the power to demand the appearance in person, the answers and documentary evidence of, in effect, anyone – including any public servant, but also any private individual – we get to a circumscribed power to subpoena only public servants “subject to political control” working for the executive branch, but not including the military, and then giving them the preferential option to submit their answers in writing, and a long series of potential excuses not to, if they – not the Assembly, but they – feel that doing so might negatively affect the conduct of public administration.

Inside the chavista imagination, you safeguard the constitution by negating it. You sustain its legitimacy by ignoring its content. The defense of the constitution and the shredding of the constitution are one and the same thing.

War is peace.

Freedom is slavery.

Ignorance is strength.

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Wonder how any of the Chavista useful idiots in this forum are gonna defend this. At this point they're defending an explicitly authoritarian regime which is not afraid to show it.