The recent decision by Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal, ordering Copei to put in place a board consisting of people they selected, presents a difficult conundrum for the opposition coalition, the MUD. The key thing here is that the Supreme Tribunal has ordered the Elections Council to only accept the roster of candidates the new Copei board proposes. Indirectly,…
There are already plenty of reports recording what happened in the wave of protests last year, but a new one from the Human Rights Center of the Andres Bello Catholic University (CDH-UCAB) puts the magnifying glass on the State’s many strategies to cover up its abuses. Under the title “Que no quede rastro” (Leave no Trace Behind),…
Anyone remember the case of “businessman”/druglord Walid Makled? This week, he was finally sentenced to 14 years and 6 months in prison for drug trafficking and money laundering, but he was also absolved of other charges. The General Prosecutor Luisa Ortega Diaz isn’t happy with the decision, and announced that the Public Ministry will appeal it…
It’s not easy being a police officer in Venezuela, one of the most violent countries in the world. But how bad is it for those responsible to protect the lives of ordinary people? Reuters’ Andrew Cawthorne and Diego Ore present us with a bleak picture of how easy it is for Venezuelan cops to lose…
Tomorrow, opposition leader María Corina Machado will go to the National Prosecutor’s Office to be indicted as an alleged conspirator in a plot to assassinate the President. Hefty charges that, if proven, carry the maximum penalty of 28 years in prison. In any other country, the “if proven” part of this sentence would be the most…
The Venezuelan Judiciary has become a rubber stamp of the Executive Branch. But now we have the truth in cold, hard numbers… Four Venezuelan lawyers went to work proving this. Their results are published in an upcoming book titled “The TSJ, at the Revolution’s service.” Basically, they looked at 45,474 decisions of three halls of the Supreme Court (the all-powerful…
After so many years, few things chavistas throw our way make us do a double take. This one did: Delcy Rodríguez, Nicolás Maduro’s former minister of Communications, the über-chavista, radical sister of equally über-chavista mayor of Libertador (Caracas) Jorge Rodríguez, wants to be … a justice in the nation’s highest court! Never mind the fact that she is…
