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38 thoughts on “And now, for your reading pleasure, Maduro’s Ley Habilitante”

    • So the president is a zombie. To be honest, that’s unfair to zombies, they have a bit more personality. Still, not equal to the gringolandia Treasury Secretary as Maduro’s sig only goes on laws. Lew’s goes on dollars.

      I am struggling a bit with this law enabling Maduro to fight bureaucracy (1.1.a). I thought that was a core tenet of chavismo. You know, duplicative governmental bodies to ensure that if one group doesn’t do its job, the other won’t either.

      As I read this, it would appear on its face to be overly broad as he could simply claim that, without really qualifiying his statements, he could declare anything speculation, attacks on the economy, or, as regards oppo polis, illegal financing. In other words, its open season (moreso than the past, if possible) on pretty much private enterprise and politicians who displease him. Shades of Papi Hugo.

      My father would call this legislation overly broad and lacking in specificity, which automatically makes it bad legislation. Then again, since when is chavismo known for “good” laws?

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      • “this legislation overly broad and lacking in specificity”
        THis is the scary part any action would be justified under this law

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      • I’m glad they did not leave “amor al projimo” out. No power to issue decrees about that would have been a huge oversight.

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  2. This is curious: not a single mention of the word “socialista”.

    The document is also badly written. The person, animal or cactus who wrote that piece hasn’t probably read a book in his or her life: no idea about sentence structure, no idea about the use of commas in Spanish.

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      • Oh, sorry, I must have fallen asleep on that part.
        What I found funny was the mention of the so-called Bolivarian revolution. They added that as an afterthought and put “…de la independencia Y … de la federación Y …de la revolución”, didn’t have the time to change the first “y” for a comma, even if they used at least 15 commas where they shouldn’t have done so.

        The thing that I found most telling was that about party financing…not that now things are very easy.

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  4. Since the idea of “Habilitante” is that extraordinary powers are required to defeat an extraordinary emergency, one would expect a sunset clause informing us of the date when Constitutional norms are reinstated.

    Maduro doesn’t even offer paper assurance of that.

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  6. Habilitantes were meant to be exceptional , under this regime they ve become the norm , Wonder if we make a tally of laws passed these last 10 years whether more laws have been passed through habilitantes than through normal legislative procedure. This implies two things , an indirect regime indictment of the processes of parlaimentary democracy ( even if controlled by it) and secondly an idolatry of Autocratic Caudillismo , of the great big powerful man who is best equiped to exercise alone all the powers of govt . Its like serving an Ego Trip in a silver plate to the man on top. Something that Chavez egolatrism savoured , but that for Maduro is simply a propaganda gesture which artificially likens him to his dear defunct predecessor.
    The language of course is faux pretentious, boastful and thickishly candified . almost indigestible (unless you have a strong stomach) , a kind of pungent rethorical pachouli.perfume
    Interestingly lots of text is dedicated towards the need for improving or remedying the flaws in the inner workings of government , implying that at long last they recognize the existence of its many shortcomings and vices , probably because they have good reason to believe that even its followers have become critically conscious of the same and that they must appear as “doing something melodramatic about it” , if only on paper !!
    If they wanted to the text could serve to reform and sanitize the inner workings of the system , but thats hardly likely , even if they wanted to the rot is too deep .!! The temptation will be there to use the habilitante only to whitewash with bombasticly drafted laws the regimes fundamental failures .and of course to invent new ways of silencing dissent and supressing an incresingly threatening opposition.!!

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  7. Does anyone have information about the exact start and end of the previous enabling laws? I
    understand Hugo I had 4 of them. It would be nice to visualise that on a time line.

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      • Weird. I just clicked on it. It’s a long chavista article, but here the part about the timing:

        Año 1999.

        La primera Ley Habilitante fue solicitada en el año 1999 y otorgada por un lapso de seis meses. Se aprobaron 53 Decretos-ley.

        Años 2000 – 2001.

        La segunda Ley Habilitante fue requerida al Parlamento en el año 2000 y concedida por un lapso de un año. Se dictaron 49 textos legales.

        Años 2007-2008.

        La tercera Ley Habilitante fue solicitada en el 2007 y otorgada para un período de 18 meses. Se crearon 59 normativas.

        Años 2010-2012.

        La cuarta Ley Habilitante fue formulada por el presidente Chávez el 17 de diciembre de 2010, otorgándole la Asamblea Nacional poderes especiales por 18 meses, ante la necesidad de atender las emergencias suscitadas en casi todo el país por las fuertes lluvias que dejaron pérdidas millonarias y miles de damnificados. Fueron aprobados 54 Decretos-Ley.

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        • If we count the period 2007 to 2012 , Chavez was granted emergency law making powers for 3 years out of some 6 years of rule . Resulting in 113 pieces of legislation . In Venezuela we suffer Emergencies lasting the same period as ordinary life periods.!! and now Maduro wants more !!

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        • It´s important to note that the 4th Ley Habilitante was passed months after 2010 legislative elections, which reconfigured the 2/3 majority that Chavismo had in the AN. Leave it to Chavez to come up with a lame excuse to approve an enabling law that would grant him 2 years of circumventing the AN. I say this because today the opposition Diputados are the only barrier left standing in any branch of government against Maduro. They should really get more credit, since only through resorting to some similar shennanigan will Maduro get his Habilitante approved.

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    • It’d be awesome to see _all_ laws that have been enacted over the past ~14 years. Bonus if it includes a one-sentence summary of what each law (or group of laws for brevity) does.

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  8. Just three thoughts.
    Taylor made… as usual… to do whatever they want. Control is the name of the game and that is the reason, me thinks.
    Writing is not a capability people from the regime have.
    It is just a detail, but it is deeply unpleasant to read about the 14° year of the ‘revolution’ along with Idependence and Federation.

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    • You are 100 % right. Just a quote: in whatever the Cubans print or write, always appears the year of the revolution at the very beginning of the article, or writing they are publishing. I am quite bored of reading in some Cuban science papers, in the fields of medicine and dentistry. So we have to get used to it or start thinking in doing something real not waiting for the Lord to come and solve this. It is sad, and makes people feel hopeless, with commies propaganda everywhere.

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  9. “Establecer mecanismos estratégicos de lucha contra aquellas potencias extranjeras que pretendan destruir la Patria en lo económico, político y mediático.”

    Destruir la Patria en lo mediático … jeje, these guys are so transparent, it makes my job so much easier.

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  10. Jesus, they really love to keep their “battle against the Empire” delusion going, don’t they? With article 1.d, it would appear Maduro has one year to attack the US and/or Israel, then. As if…
    Aside from that, it’s far more scary to see that this poor excuse of a legislative document is very broad and ambiguous, instead of it having concise things like “Incarcerate MCM and HCap now!”
    And look at that! We’re counting time based on the year that Chavez uttered the words revolucion bolivariana! The year XIV a.R.B.! The revolution is the new Anno Domini!

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