It is
characteristic (or endemic?) of the current state of the Venezuelan Justice
system, that political cases of interest to the Government deserve all the
attention, but things like murder, torture, human rights violation and disappearances
seem to have little importance to the higher members of our Justice system.
Such is
the case of the strange accusations by the President of National Assembly
against Nelson Mezerhane, who has been accused and detained for participating
in the assassination of Prosecutor Danilo Anderson. Maduro said that Mezerhane
had tried to bribe the judge in the case with three million dollars in cash at
a meeting a week ago Monday attended by Mezerhane, the President of the most
anti-Chavez TV station (maybe because it is an all news station) and the main
financier of Chavez’ electoral campaign in 1998 and 2000. The problem is that
Mezerhane had turned himself in the same day at midday, while the meeting was
supposed to have taken place in the evening. Moreover, the President of
Globovision was at a meeting with all workers of the TV channel. Thus, we are
talking he had some 200 witnesses to his whereabouts.
Now, I
could believe that Mezerhane tried to bribe the judge, I could even believe
that he bribed his way out of jail just to be at a meeting, but I simply can
not believe Maduro’s story because it would not make sense of Mezerhane to turn
himself in at noon and then do all sorts of contortions and bribes to be able
to go out to a meeting that night.
Despite
this, the Vice-President says
that despite the imprecisions this needs to be investigated. The President of
the Constitutional Hall comes
out and demands that the Prosecutor’s office accelerate its investigation
of the charges and today the President of the full Supreme Court comes out and says he backs the
demands by the President of the Constitutional Hall.
This
happens when the accusation appears to be groundless, inconsistent and simply
not truth. Meanwhile, the parents of Antonio Lopez Castillo have yet to hear a
single piece of evidence linking their son to the murder of Anderson,
for
which their son was killed by police days after the Anderson assai nation. In fact, they themselves
were jailed that day, treated shabbily and have received an apology for their
treatment and erroneous arrest, but they have not been told about any
investigation involving their dead son. And it has been a year.
The same
could be said of the murder of Juan Carlos Sanchez, also killed by police
in the days after the Anderson
assassination, initially
reported by high Government officials as a confrontation, but now the
Prosecutor General says that he was set up. But we do not hear anyone calling
for an acceleration of that investigation either! Or the April 11 deaths. Or
corruption in a scale never seen in Venezuela. Or the disappearances by
the Police in Cojedes. (Oh, sorry those were investigated, Chavez talked to the
Governor and that was it!) and so on and so forth.
But
amazingly, the Head of the National Assembly, in the middle of his campaign for
reelection, with the vote a week away. With such serious and apparently
groundless charges made in such an important case, is holding up the
investigation because he is traveling. Official Business? Nope. Family
Emergency? Nope? Assembly representation? Nope.
It turns
out Maduro left to attend the celebration of the 80h, birthday of his “spiritual
guide”. Hopefully, the taxpayers are not paying for it.
Such are
the ways of the noveau rich and the bolibourgeois in this robolution
The Devil's Excrement 