2024-02-04 06:14:00
The dictator Nicolás Maduro, and the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, Caryslia Rodríguez, during the opening of the new judicial period with the magistrates of the TSJ, in Caracas (REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria)REUTERS
On Thursday, January 24, the president of the National Assembly of Venezuela, Jorge Rodríguez, launched a forceful threat to María Corina Machado. “There is no way for her to be a candidate in any election in Venezuela,” he stated in a fiery intervention before Chavista legislators.
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On repeated occasions, the regime had been warning that the leader of Vente Venezuela (VV), an opposition candidate following her overwhelming victory in the internal elections, would not be part of the next presidential elections scheduled for this year. However, international pressure and the Barbados Agreements shed a light of hope so that, once and for all, Chavismo will guarantee free and transparent elections.
But the Maduro dictatorship, despite its signed promises and commitments, had other plans.
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Rodríguez’s words were nothing more than a preview of what would happen hours later. On Friday the 25th, the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) – friendly to the regime – ratified the political disqualification that already weighed on María Corina Machado.
A TSJ that with this ruling once once more became the focus of controversy. He once once more served the regime and turned his back on the Venezuelan Constitution. A TSJ that in its formation already violates the provisions of the Magna Carta, since the new members of the board of directors do not meet the requirements to hold the position.
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Article 263 of the Constitution is the one that lists the conditions to serve as magistrates of the highest court. In addition to having Venezuelan nationality by birth, and no other nationality, they must be citizens of recognized honorability; be a lawyer of recognized competence; enjoy a good reputation; have practiced law for a minimum of 15 years and have a university degree in legal matters; or have been a tenured university professor for a minimum of 15 years; or be or have been a senior judge in the specialty corresponding to the Chamber for which he is applying, with a minimum of 15 years in the exercise of the judicial career, and of recognized prestige in the performance of his duties; among others.
“They intervened in the court, which was already an adulterated court, which did not meet the minimum requirements (…) whose judges were not chosen even through a public competition, but rather hand-picked by like-minded people,” he explained to Infobae. the Venezuelan constitutional lawyer Carlos Ramírez López.
Maduro with the members of the Venezuelan TSJ, during the opening of the judicial year (REUTERS/Leonardo Fernandez Viloria)REUTERS
“They restructured the court that started from renewing the directives. The president of the TSJ, who was from the Constitutional Chamber, Gladys Gutiérrez, did not want to sign that ruling and stood aside. That is why they put Caryslia Rodríguez, a party activist who has been doing party advertising, who has no signs of independence… They put her in to issue that sentence,” she added.
Despite not having greater experience in the judicial area, Rodríguez, who served as president of the Electoral Chamber of the TSJ since April 2022, was appointed as president of the TSJ in mid-January during a meeting of the magistrates that make up the Chamber. Plenary, in which the president of the Social Cassation Chamber, Edgar Gavidia Rodríguez, was ratified as first vice president of the Supreme Court, while Tania D’Amelio, former rector of the National Electoral Council (CNE), was named second vice president of the maximum court and president of the Constitutional Chamber.
Until a few years ago, Rodríguez was part of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which contrasts with the requirements to join the nation’s highest court of justice. As a Chavista official, she was a councilor for Circuit 3 of the Libertador municipality of the Capital District in 2018, and mayor in charge of Caracas in 2021.
His recent appointment as head of the TSJ took place while Machado’s defense, which for several days attended the headquarters of the TSJ, waited for the highest court to rule on the lifting of the disqualification. “I never understood why María Corina Machado stuck to that commitment to go before a court that is an adulterated court, that is not a court of justice, putting her candidacy in the hands of these people,” said Ramírez López.
And he added: “They didn’t even let him see the file. The lawyer was visiting the court and they told him that it was being restructured, and the restructuring was the change of magistrates. In the sentence they argue extra-legal elements, such as that María Corina Machado would be involved in issues such as Monómeros or Citgo, when she has nothing to do with it.”
The Political-Administrative Chamber of the TSJ validated the arguments to sanction the leader of Vente Venezuela, whom Chavismo accuses of being “a participant in the corruption plot orchestrated by the usurper Juan Antonio Guaidó M., who led to the criminal blockade of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, as well as the blatant dispossession of the companies and wealth of the Venezuelan people abroad, with the complicity of corrupt governments.”
The TSJ had created a mechanism to challenge disqualifications for those who aspired to run for president in 2024, under pressure from the United States and in the midst of the Barbados Agreements between the government and the opposition in a negotiation process that is mediated from Norway.
The sentence once morest María Corina Machado (TSJ)
Ramírez López also explained that the new judicial authorities “manipulated the TSJ law itself”: “Something they have been doing in this type of thorny sentences. In this case it is of great relevance due to the decision.”
In that sense, he referred to the “joint presentation” modality implemented by the Chavista judges. As he explained, the sentences have to be under the responsibility of a magistrate. In this case there are three that make up the room. However, they established a modality that does not exist in the law, which is “joint presentation.”
“According to the law of the TSJ, when an action arrives, the court meets, and the presentation is assigned to one of the magistrates. This magistrate prepares a draft presentation, presents it at a meeting, and it can be approved unanimously -or not-. At some point someone may object and it may be specified in the writing (…) But they adopted a modality, that of joint presentation, to avoid assuming that responsibility. From that modification, the three magistrates studied the sentence and wrote it by hand, so as not to reveal who assumed responsibility for the decision,” said the Venezuelan lawyer.
These types of political disqualifications, which represent an old weapon of Chavismo to get its most important political rivals out of the way, are imposed by the Comptroller’s Office.
Ramírez López recalled that the dictatorship used “a false comptroller” to carry out this action once morest the opposition leader: “At that time the comptroller was Manuel Galindo Ballesteros. The Constitution establishes that to be in office he must be approved by the National Assembly, but Cilia Flores left him in office. He spent a year as attorney general, then he left office and was appointed comptroller general without the requirements established by the Constitution.”
Despite having been in charge of the Comptroller’s Office, it was not he who signed the first disqualification, but rather Antonio José Meneses: “He was an unrelevant official, not the comptroller.”
María Corina Machado affirmed that she will continue in the race for the presidency of Venezuela, and described the disqualification once morest her as an act of “judicial delinquency” (EFE/ MIGUEL GUTIERREZ) (EPA) EFE
Meneses, who signed the disqualification of María Corina Machado on June 30, was later transferred to the National Electoral Council.
The leader of Vente Venezuela had been disqualified for a year in 2015 for having attended as “alternate ambassador” of Panama a meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) to denounce the human rights violations perpetrated by the Maduro dictatorship during the civil protests of that year. But last year the regime extended that sanction to 15 years of disqualification from holding public office, in the middle of the campaign for the opposition primaries. Machado, however, did not go to the Comptroller’s Office at that time because he dismissed the case once morest him, which to this day he considers arbitrary and illegal.
Despite the disqualification once morest him, he ran for office and won 92% of the votes. Now, following the ratification of his disqualification, he stated that he will participate in the presidential elections despite the decision of the highest court of justice. “I received a mandate from the people and we will enforce it,” he said during an event in front of his supporters in Caracas. “Nicolás Maduro is not going to choose the people’s candidate because the people have already chosen who his candidate is, period.”
The attack once morest the opposition leader provoked strong international condemnation and the United States issued an ultimatum to Maduro, warning him that he has until April to enable her or, otherwise, it will reinstate the sanctions. But the Venezuelan dictator seems to have what he wanted so much: Alex Saab back in Caracas, and María Corina Machado disqualified. Last Wednesday he participated in the opening of the Judicial Year, in which, in addition to highlighting the work of the TSJ, he made it clear that there will be no changes in the sentence: “A res judicata, a definitive sentence (…) No one can be above a country and the Constitution.”
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