Venezuela law heralds purge of supreme court judges

[Quetzal]

Venezuela law heralds purge of supreme court judges

CARACAS - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government plans to use a law to reform the Supreme Court to purge top judges, similar to the way it fired thousands of opposition strikers from the state oil firm last year, a pro-Chavez lawmaker said on Tuesday.

Legislation approved Friday by a majority of lawmakers loyal to the left-wing president makes it easier for Venezuela's National Assembly to appoint new Supreme Court magistrates.

Opposition leaders fear Chavez will take advantage of the law to pack the Supreme Court with political allies. They say it is part of his strategy to bolster his control over state institutions at a time when he is resisting an opposition bid to hold an August referendum on his rule.

Pro-Chavez National Assembly deputy Luis Velazquez defended the legislation he drafted, saying it would be used to combat political bias in Venezuela's judicial system, which he described as one of the most corrupt in the world.

more...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/latestnewsstory.cfm?storyID=3564599&thesection=news&thesubsection=world

[Vladimir]

1. Good

these would be the same judges that acquitted the coup-leaders of 2002... its about time they were dealt with.

[Tellurian]

2. The Supreme Court were probably Bush appointees anyway..nt

[bemildred]

3. Heaven forfend anyone should try to fill the court with allies.

We only allow enemies of the pResident on the court here ...

[The Magistrate]

4. An Excellent Move, Sir

Col. Chavez is damned good at this work....

[Tellurian]

5. Yes, he is. He's fended off takeovers twice...

I like Chavez.

[The Magistrate]

8. He Is One Of My Favorites As Well, Sir

He seems to really mean to do something about improving the situation of the poverty-stricken mass of Venezuelans.

Col. Chavez seems to me a throw-back to the nineteenth century's modernizing, pre-Marxist radicals, who frequently found their base in the armed forces as well. These people understood that bringing about better conditions for the mass of people was the surest way to improve the power and stature of their countries.

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

11. Speaking of......

Venezuelan May Day March Welcomed 30% Wage Increase

Sunday, May 02, 2004 Print format
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By: Martín Sánchez - Venezuelanalysis.com


Pro-Chavez Venezuelan workers march on International Workers Day in Caracas.
Photo: Aporrea.org

Caracas, Venezuela. May 2 (Venezuelanalysis.com).- Venezuelan workers grouped in the National Workers Union (Union Nacional de Trabajadores - UNT), marched enthusiastically in Caracas in celebration of International Workers Day. The workers remembered the Haymarket square Chicago martyrs who fought for the eight hours work day, rejected foreign intervention in Venezuela, and welcomed the government's 30% minimum wage increase.





http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news.php?newsno=1263

[Tellurian]

12. I admired his depth of caring for his people...

We helped journalists from Ireland with video documentation on the first attempted takeover. We were the go between them and a UK journalist, Greg Pallast, who wrote about what was happening sending first hand information off to his newspaper, The Guardian.

[Judi Lynn]

6. Meanwhile, Otto Reich isn't going to give up one moment's poison spewing

before they haul him off at the end of the year. He has some real "insider news" to share with his anti-Chavez buds:

US-Venezuela ties could deteriorate if Chavez supports violent groups: US official

Tue May 4, 2:23 PM ET Add Politics - AFP to My Yahoo!



WASHINGTON (AFP) - Ties between Washington and Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's government could deteriorate further if he continues supporting "violent groups" in the region, a top White House official said.

"Without getting into questions of intelligence, there are many reports of continuing support for violent groups in severalcountries, particularly in the Andean region -- but not just in the Andean region, from Venezuela," said Otto Reich, the White House's special envoy to Latin America.

Speaking at an event sponsored by the Council of the Americas -- a private pro-business group -- Reich said Washington has "made our concern known to the government of Venezuela."

"We expect that, if the situation doesn't improve, we can have further deterioration of the relationship," he said.
(snip)

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/afp/20040504/pl_afp/us_venezuela_040504182357

Here's looking at you, Otto

[Guy Whitey Corngood]

7. A Presidential Option for the Poor in Venezuela?

A Presidential Option for the Poor in Venezuela?

Monday, May 03, 2004



By: Rose Marie Berger - Sojourners

Sister Begoña Plágaro was highly skeptical of left-leaning Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. "I grew up in Spain under Franco," she says. "I know how dangerous it can be to mix political leadership with military leadership."

Begoña, a religious sister of the Society of the Sacred Heart, has worked since 1991 in a barrio called El Estanque, one of the thousands of desperately poor "squatter neighborhoods" that surround Venezuela’s capital city. Though uncertain about Chávez, Sister Begoña decided to take her chances with the poor. "They were the first to really understand the Chávez project," she says. If supporting Chávez was a mistake, she would rather err with the poor than against them.

Far from being alone, Sister Begoña is one of thousands of religious workers at the base in Venezuela who say the Chávez government is honoring the gospel mandate of a "preferential option for the poor" claimed by Catholic bishops at a 1968 meeting in Medellín, Colombia.




http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1168

[9215]

9. After reading Bugliosi's book "The Betrayal of America"

about the 2000 pResident selection I was thinking that a future president should do the same thing in the US. There is a very strong case for trying these SCOTUS scoundrels.

[AP]

10. Historically, in post-colonial societies, the judiciary is the last refuge

for the scoundrels.

It takes education and experience to become a lawyer and a judge, and law schools, if there are any, tend to be dominated by the imperialists, and if there aren't any, they lawyers and judges are often trained back at Oxford and Cambridge, where loyalties develop for the colonizer and not the people subjected to the judiciary.

What Chavez is doing is just and logical. He wants the judciary to represent the contemporary political mood, and not be an anchor that ties government to a past that has loyalties to foreign capital rather than domestic democracy.

Of course, it's easy for foreign capital to criticize this. Notice the loaded words used to describe what he's doing, like "purge" rather than "modernize," or break from its fascist past, which wouldn't be inappropriate to describe Venezuela. Also not how it's equated with firing "strikers" -- which is very misleading. Those "strikers" were management, not labor, and they were loyal to foreign interests, even though they were supposed to be managing a state-owned company.