The Devil's Excrement

It was indeed quiet in my absence. I managed to turn my brain mostly off from the conflicts here, but today things got back into action when the Electoral hall of the Venezuelan Supreme Court reiterated its decision on the signatures deemed by the Electoral Board to be under observation, as well as reaffirming the fact that it has the jurisdiction to rule on electoral matters and has the same level as the Constitutional hall.

In its long sentence the Electoral Hall considers all of the requests and history of the case and decides to reiterate that its competence to consider the case and orders the CNE to i) Validate the signatures under observation ii) Include in the ratification process more than 39,000 forms which were excluded and iii) proceed to organize the ratification process. Finally the Electoral Hall, once again poses the problem of conflict of competence between itself and the Constitutional Hall.

From a legal point of view, the decision has to be followed by the CNE. Obviously, Chavez’ MVR rejected the decision and even threatened to initiate a trial against the President of the Electoral Hall of the Supreme Court, but the decision stands until the full Court says the Electoral Hall has no competence or changes the decision.

For the Government the decision represents a big problem. The Electoral hall had encouraged the sides to negotiate which the Government and the CNE refused to do. But this time around, the Electoral Hall is ordering the CNE to hold the recall. The Hall could act if the CNE refuses to follow the order, creating a legal conflict that will show that the Chavez administration is not willing to follow the rules and will do anything to stop the recall vote.

While an important victory, for the opposition this represents only one more step in showing that the Chavez administration will not follow the Constitution and its is the opposition that has chosen the democratic path. A small victory, but one that leads to further conflicts and unmasking the true nature of Chavez and his cohorts.

This entry was posted on April 12, 2004 at 10:02 pm and is filed under Venezuela.