The Supreme Court (TSJ) under pressure

• Ever since he was elected president in 1998, Hugo Chávez has put great pressure on the Supreme Court (TSJ). First he strong-armed the Court to get it to approve a non-binding referendum so that he could convene a constituyent assembly, despite the fact that there were no provisions for such in the 1961 constitution, which was in force at the time. The pressure continued, forcing a majority of the justices to resign in late August, 1999.

  Full control over the (TSJ)

• Once the members of the new National Assembly (NA) were elected in 2000, new TSJ was elected by a 2/3 majority of the NA, now firmly under the control of the government.

• These new TSJ members, however, weren’t elected according to the appropriate norms established in Article 263 of the Constitution. The justices themselves defined their election criteria, and some of them even stipulated that they could be re-elected. These criteria are included in a ruling handed down on December 22, 2000 relative to the Special Law for the Ratification or Designation of Public Officials and Magistrates to the Supreme Court for the First Constitutional Period.

  Organic Law governing the TSJ is modified

• It was just a question of time before the new TSJ began handing down decisions that displeased the Executive and served as obstacles to its political ambitions. At this point the government began a campaign to modify the Organic Law of the TSJ. For example, after the turbulent events of April 11, 2002, when Hugo Chávez abandoned the seat of government, and then was subsequently reinstated as president, the full Chamber of the TSJ could find no grounds to indict the military officers who were accused of mutiny. In addition, the TSJ’s Electoral Chamber issued rulings which ratified that the signatures collected in the presidential recall referendum petition drive were in fact gathered in a proper legal manner. These manifestations of judicial independence on behalf of the TSJ’s signalled the beginning the government’s efforts to overhaul the Organic Law of the TSJ.

• In accordance with Article 203 of the constitution, the passage or amendment of an organic law requires a two-thirds majority vote of the NA. Nevertheless, the TSJ law was modified by a narrow simple majority (83 out of 165). When a group of citizens and NA members filed an injunction to nullify the amendments to the law on the grounds that the vote and amendment process violated the constitution, the TSJ ratified its constitutionality through a ruling dated January 26, 2004.

• After this ruling, a simple majority of the government-controlled NA passed a series of measures which modified substantially the Organic Law that governs the TSJ, and began reorganizing and appointing new magistrates to the Court. Some of them had been militants or well-known supporters of the government-controlled Fifth Republic Movement (MVR) party, and some had even been serving as MVR or allied party congressmen in the NA. This is how President Chávez’s government gained full control over the country’s highest court.

• After amending the Organic Law governing the TSJ, the NA proceeded to appoint new magistrates to the Court in order to fill vacancies which had occurred when a number of magistrates decided to take early retirement as a result of the pressures they were receiving from the government. There were 17 such appointments, along with 32 judges voted in as deputy members of the Court. This coup within the judicial system prompted the chairman of the Nominations Committee, congressman and retired military officer Pedro Carreño, to boast that with the new Court, none of the opposition’s complaints would fall on receptive ears: “We have no intention of kicking the ball into our own goal (No nos vamos a meter un autogol”)...these are magistrates whose affiliation with the revolution is more than assured.”

• Omar Mora Díaz has been named chief justice of the TSJ, replacing Iván Rincón Urdaneta, who President Chávez Frías named ambassador to the Vatican. Shortly after his nomination, Mora Díaz also made partisan and politically triumphant remarks to the effect that from now on the Court would dispense “revolutionary justice” NB. In late May Omar Díaz’s US tourist visa was revoked by the US Consul in Caracas.