Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): Something resembling a turf battle has suddenly broken out between the National Assembly (AN) and the Supreme Justice Tribunal (TSJ). At issue is a Bill for an Organic Law of Public Defense, and the powerful interior policy committee is leading the charge. The TSJ stands accused of making a power grab at parliament's expense.
What got up the legislators' noses was the TSJ rewriting two Articles of the text setting out who would control a new public defense agency and procedures for electing its chief.
As approved by the Assembly, the new agency would be controlled by the Public Defender's Office. The head of the new organization would be elected by the Assembly. But the TSJ ruled it would be in charge of both issues.
Deputy Francisco Ameliach, who heads the committee, remarked that it wasn't the first time the TSJ had usurped legislative powers and it was time it stopped. He said plans to raise the issue in the chamber were under study. The TSJ could throw out a law because it was unconstitutional but not modify bits of it, he said.
There was no word from Deputy Cilia Flores, the normally tough-minded president of the Assembly, but that didn't stop the others.
Deputy Tulio Jiménez said the decision "makes us think there are interests in the middle that in no way benefit the administration of justice." His colleague, Francisco López, said the TSJ had delivered a "sentence" in the interests of a particular judge. He named no names.
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I'm no fan of the bourgeois division of power in the state. All these old and corruptable ways of 'checking and balancing' power among thieves have to make way for a socialist council system. But as far as this situation here goes: certainly these judges are crooked in some way, to have done this. How dare they usurp the legislative power of the elected representatives. That in itself is grounds for a constitutional showdown. And heads should roll.
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