“It's a total disaster”: the striking criticism of a chavismo referent to the Venezuelan Supreme Court of Justice

In a striking tirade against the head of one of the branches of government, the ultrachavist Pedro Carreño, a deputy of Venezuela's National Constituent Assembly (ANC), assured, during his Desenlaces program , that the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) is “a total disaster” and denounced that there are two people who are not judges imposing decisions.

He also strongly criticized the president of the TSJ: “In this court that is going to be said to have not 32 judges but 34. That there is a 33 magistrate who makes the decisions. The litigation in this country is over. And there is another lady who with the designation, she is the one who decides when it becomes effective, when is the delivery, when they swear in. A total disaster! ”.

He continued: “I watched the installation of the judicial year on television and listened carefully to the speeches and there I saw no rectification, no revision, no call to amend. That was the Titanic. The sinking ship and pure applause, pure achievements, pure conquests. And the corruption that swarms there, everything that is happening within the justice system! Oh, my God, aren't you going to make a rectification? Neither the magistrate (Marjorie Calderón) nor the president (Maikel Moreno)... that was pure achievement. The Titanic sinking and the orchestra playing.”

The president of the Venezuelan National Assembly (AN, Parliament), Jorge Rodríguez, reported last week that 254 people make up the final list of aspiring judges of the Supreme Court of Justice following the reform of the organic law governing the powers of that instance, which reduced the number of judges to 20.

“The Republican Moral Council (Prosecutor's Office, Comptroller's Office and Prosecutor's Office) evaluated the credentials and today it is presented here in the National Assembly with 254 names, 254 women and men who have gone through the entire process of presenting credentials, evaluation, interview by the Judicial Nominations Committee,” Rodríguez explained in statements at the headquarters of the Legislative.

He also said that, in the next five days, the deputies will evaluate the postulates and in a “peremptory period”, which he did not specify, Venezuela will have new Supreme Magistrates.

However, the opposition political movement Vente Venezuela warned that the process of “re-institutionalization” of the judicial system, carried out by the Chavista majority national parliament, seeks to form a HCJ that is “appendix” to the Government.

“From Vente Venezuela we are alerting citizens to the imminent appointment of a HCJ appendix to the regime, under the false argument of the re-institutionalization of the judiciary and clearly undermining the participation of civil society in a process that must include non-partisan civil representation,” the right-wing group led by María Corina Machado.

Vente Venezuela considered that the process that began on January 18 in Parliament, following the reform of the Law of the Supreme Court of Justice, and the appointment of new judges seeks “the sustenance of (Nicolás) Maduro and the commission of serious violations of human rights”.

“They are preparing the ground to form a tribunal to suit them and stop the progress of the investigation against Nicolás Maduro in the International Criminal Court (ICC), as well as the trials and economic sanctions that exist against the criminal conglomerate that usurps power,” the opposition party ruled.

For the political organization, this is a “supposed demonstration” that national and international demands were met for the “recovery of the rule of law”, but that it “also seeks to extend unconstitutionally and for twelve more years the tenure of those judges who have supported the regime's totalitarian project ”, as this group calls the Government of Maduro.

(With information from EFE)

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