Foundation stone of any fair system of justice seems to have been absent in the Russian ban

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): A logjam of legislative work is piling up at the National Assembly (AN), and is likely to get bigger when the Enabling Law granting President Hugo Chávez special powers expires on July 31. AN president Cilia Flores says the Assembly won’t extend the Enabling Law.

Chavez has used his special powers extensively during the 17 months the Enabling Law has been in force. One law created the "strong" Bolivar Fuerte at the turn of the year. Another converted food hoarding and "speculation" into criminal offenses punishable with prison.

Most famously, earlier this month Chavez signed a law on the secret services only to veto it just days later. Perhaps he’d reached for his pen without thoroughly reading the intelligence law, widely thought to have been the work of Interior and Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin. The law reorganized the intelligence community with the stated intention of doing away with two of them -- the state security service, Disip, and the military intelligence directorate, DIM. But it was Article 16 that caught the eye. This legally obliged people to inform on anyone who seemed to be acting or speaking against the security of the state, and was quickly seen as writ for snoopers and snitches.

The ink was barely dry when Chavez’ took to the airwaves on June 10 to denounce "disastrous" parts of the law which were not going to happen while he was around, vetoed the law and called on the Assembly for alternative legislation. Just how high up the legislative agenda this now is remains unclear. It’s said the plan won’t be resurrected until next year, by when Rodriguez Chacin maybe won’t be around any more.

Be that as it may, AN deputies have no shortage of things to do. The interior policy committee -- first port of call for Intelligence Law Mark II -- is looking at a reform of the Organic Penal Process Code aimed at speeding up court proceedings. Deputy Tulio Jimenez says this should go to a second debate and vote in the chamber this week.

Waiting in the wings are new laws on banks and other financial institutions; insurance and re-insurance; profits tax; the Organic Tax Code, and overturning the National Public Treasury Law because it’s "distorting" the national accounts.

All this time, the question has been why Chavez needed special powers in the first place, given his overwhelming majority in the legislature. The answer may be legislators’ tendency to fiddle with lesser items instead of the heavy stuff. Last week, for instance, they not only took time out to back the Russian ban on 386 aspirant election candidates, an issue for the courts, but also to make the rather meaningless gesture of declaring 2008 the Year of Salvador Allende, the Marxist president of Chile who died during a coup d’etat 35 years ago.