The Devil's Excrement

As if today’s charade was not sufficient, the pro-Chavez members of the National Assembly said that today’s rejection of the minutes of last week’s session when the Assembly’s bylaws were modified was a tie. A new session will take place on Thursday where they will try to approve them again after two defeats today. Once again this Government and its partisans show they are not democrats and have a complete disregard for the law. The word fascism comes to mind when one sees the behavior of the President of the National Assembly today. The opposition says the rules are quite clear and this represents the most significant defeat of Chavez’ supporters in the National Assembly. Former Chavez supporters under the party “Podemos” ratified at the end of the session today that they will not vote in favor of illegality and running over the rules and will continue voting against the legality of last week’s session. Note that when Chavez first won the Assembly he had a majority of 64% of the Assembly which he has now lost, mostly through confrontation with his former allies.  

The Interamerican Committee on Human Rights (CIDH) said today in Chile that the polarization in Venezuela was being promoted by the Chavez administration. “The highest authorities in their communications use a language that promotes polarization” said the CIDH adding that they have suspended their relations with the Venezuelan Government saying “they (the Government) perfer if we do not visit” . They also added that the Venezuelan Government thinks that the CIDH does not act impartially. In the saddest part for decent Venezuelans, the CIDH statement added that The four worst human rights offenders are Cuba, Haiti, Colombia and Venezuela.

The Venezuelan Supreme Court walked today a very fine line in attempting to maintain a balance by ruling in a manner that allows it to be in good terms with both the opposition and the Chávez administration at the same time.  As has become customary with this Court, the ruling was weird to say the least. Essentially, the Attorney General’s office had asked the Court for an injunction to protect its constitutional rights that were violated when the supposedly the wrong Court ruled that it could not hold the leaders of the oil strike in jail because it had not followed legal procedure in finding their guilt. Well, the highest Court today granted the injunction, but said that the Attorney General’s office had indeed violated the rights of the indicted and violated their rights and thus said the Attorney General should begin the investigative phase of the case. Now, in any other country, if the Attorney General had any dignity and if the Government had any measure of propriety, the Attorney General would resign after this decision. After all, the Supreme Court said the Attorney General’s office violated the right of due process of those indicted. But Attorney General Rodriguez, who was Chavez’ first Vice-President is simply an immoral thug at the service of the Dictator. By the way, while positive, I consider the Court’s decision a travesty.

Tonight it was proven beyond any reasonable doubt why the Chavez Government is simply a dictatorial and outlaw Government. Last week the pro-Chavez thugs held a meeting of the National Assembly outside of the Capital building in order to approve a new set of regulations for the way debate is handled and how the Assembly works. The idea was to reduce quorum and votes to an absurd one third for committees. The spurious meeting was held at the El Calvario park and reportedly 92 Deputies voted in favor of the reforms. Well, today the Assembly met back in the Capital building and the Chavistas FAILED to approve the minutes of that other meeting, which implies that the new regulations have not been approved. After two rounds of votes, the votes are tied, according to the Government and the minutes were rejected according to the opposition. To me, independent of the interpretation is that the vote shows that this is a mockery of a Government that through tricks and cheating wants to impose its will. Whatever happened to the ten “extra” Deputies that approved the changes last week? Where were they today? Simply, the meeting of the Assembly was not only illegal, but  the Deputies never existed!!!

Made some asjustments so that I can post until the problem is solved:

While I am still skeptical that Chavez and his thugs from MVR have lost control of the National Assembly, the numbers suggest that they have. Local newspaper El Nacional reported yesterday that a total of 22 alternates showed up to be part of the quorum for the spurious session of the National Assembly in local park El Calvario. Given that they Chavistas claimed they had 94 Deputies, this implies that next week when the Assembly meets, if it ever does, Chavez’ MVR will only have 72 seats, far from the 80-plus majority needed. There are rumors of pressures, payoffs and threats against the Deputies who decided not to attend the session and that some of them may hold a press conference to describe them. Stay tuned; were Chavez to lose control of the Assembly, I believe Chavez will act in a forceful way to attempt to maintain his stronghold over the country.

When he was getting ready to begin a talk at the Law Department of the Univeristy of El Zulia in the city of Maracaibo, Leopoldo Lopez, Mayor of the Chacao District of Caracas was attacked and shot at. Five hooded and armed men broke into the conference room shooting with 9 mm. guns and throwing tear gas bombs. One sympathizer of Lopez’ Primero Justicia party and another student suffered bullet wounds and the Mayor had to be taken away and his talk cancelled. Primero Justicia is an opposition party, which led the gathering of the signatures for the failed consultative referendum. 

Chavez MVR held a its meeting of the National Assembly at local park El Calvario in violation of legal procedures today and approved the changes in the law that regulates the operation of the Assembly and its debates. This shameful event makes a mockery of democracy. Even the quorum of the meeting has to be questioned as ten alternates were invited to attend to replace the principals who refused (some people, even within Chavez’ MVR still have some decency and dignity left). Moreover, since the meeting was only attended by Chavez’ supporters there is not even a way of checking that there was a quorum. The event was so blatanly illegal that even international press agencies got the story right.

What happened today was a circus aimed at distracting opinion from the true fact that this outlaw and dictatorial Government has redefined the concept of quorum to be one-third for the approval of laws in committee, which will allow it to legislate at will and foregoing the rules of democracy and decency. The opposition will ask the Supreme Court to rule the session illegal, but if it does not, Chavez will officialize that the country lives in a shameful Dicatorship. What’s next?

The Venezuelan Supreme Court denied a request for an injunction to declare the exchange controls illegal. Basically, the current Court ruled in Dec. 2001 that only the National Assembly could decide to impose controls referring to a suit brought in front of the Court at the time of Caldera’s exchange controls in 1994-1995 and 1996.

Interestingly, the Court did declare that the matter was “urgent” and that certain steps would not be needed and the Court would consider the casde within 20 days. Reportedly, the Court is concerned that if it declares the controls illegal there could be capital flight. Thus, once again, the Court is going beyond its reach and considering not what the law says but the politics and implications of its decisions which is not its Constitutional mandate. If it is illegal, it is illegal and if there is capital flight, so be it. That’s the law!

News in the last two days has been dominated by the National Assembly, as the pro-Chavez Deputies attempt to kidnap what little is left of democracy in Venezuela. The pro-Chavez Deputies have been attempting to pass a new law that regulates debates and the functioning of the National Assembly as a way of guaranteeing the President’s total control over our society. (This the fifth modification of this law in the last three years as the chavistas manipualte legality for their goals) The strategy was actually quite incredible, the proposed bill would redefine quorum in all committees as only needing one third of the members of each committee to convene and approve bills as well as eliminating the committee which controls the flow of bills to the floor of the Assembly. In this way the chavistas could pass any bill through committee and then make use of their slim majority in the Assembly to approve any bill Chavez desires, without consensus, discussion and the usual give and take of democracy.

The strategy was designed to approve two very important bills to guarantee the demise of Venezuelan democracy: The media content bill, which would give the Government total control and power over what is said and done by and in the media and the Supreme Court bill which would increase the number of Justices from the current twenty to thirty. Since Chavez would name the new ten members of the highest Court, it would guarantee that rulings would favor Chavez perpetuating through deceit, trickery and indecency this autocratic and dictatorial regime.

The opposition was not going to allow this easily. On Tuesday it boycotted the session and today it attempted to block the approval of the bill, before the President of the Assembly cancelled the special meeting and convened for a “special” session of the Assembly at the public El Calvario monument next Friday. As the Capitol building was surrounded by a violent crowd of pro-Chavez supporters, MVR Deputies were allowed to go through while opposition Deputies were barred from leaving, essentially being kidnapped and intimidated by the chavista mob. Reportedly this has created dissent within Chavez’ party and reportedly a sufficiently large number of Deputies are against these tactics and have vowed to vote with the opposition from now on. If true, which I somehow doubt, this may be very important for the future of this country, as it would force Chavez, for the first time since he was elected, to talk to the opposition if he wants to get something accomplished. Once again, these events show the totalitarian, autocratic style of this dictatorial Government.