Venezuela's Parliament begins the process to appoint new Supreme Court justices

Caracas.- The National Assembly (AN, Parliament) of Venezuela, dominated by Chavismo, appointed this Tuesday a commission of deputies to begin the process of selecting new magistrates to fill "vacancies" in the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), without specifying which areas or whom.

The president of Parliament, Chavista Jorge Rodríguez, indicated that "due to various circumstances" there are "some vacant positions", without detailing how many, for principal and alternate magistrates in the highest court of the South American country. For this reason, it was pointed out, the designation of a "preliminary committee" of deputies was decided, in charge of installing the Judicial Nominations Committee that must make a public call to receive applications for the positions, evaluate the proposals and elect the new judges of the TSJ.

Changes in the Supreme Court of Venezuela

Rodríguez stated that the beginning of this selection process takes place «within the framework of the deep process of judicial reform» promoted by the acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, for a «restructuring of a fair justice system». The eleven members of the preliminary commission were approved by the majority of the plenary, and are chaired by Chavista deputy Giuseppe Alessandrello.

It is also made up of Chavista parliamentarians Carlos Mogollón, María Gabriela Vega, Desiree Santos Amaral, Gloria Castillo, Fernando Bastidas and José Villarroel; along with Luis Augusto Romero, from the Avanzada Progresista party and Félix Freites, from Fuerza Vecinal, both from the minority opposition, as well as deputies Pablo Pérez, Félix Freites, and Antonio Ecarri, from the opposition Libertad bench.

Call

According to the Constitution of Venezuela, the Judicial Nominations Committee must issue an open call for candidates for magistrates, evaluate their credentials, and send a pre-selection to the Citizen Power -comprising the Prosecutor's Office, Ombudsman's Office, and Comptroller's Office-, which must make a second pre-selection and send it to the plenary of Parliament, which finally selects and definitively appoints the new magistrates.

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The Organic Law of the TSJ also indicates that each magistrate must be elected by a qualified majority, that is, the vote of two-thirds of the deputies of the AN.

The Venezuelan Parliament recently appointed the new heads of the Prosecutor's Office and the Ombudsman's Office, Larry Devoe and Eglée González Lobato, respectively, two appointments approved by the broad Chavista majority, despite other candidates proposed by the opposition minority. This appointment of new magistrates begins two months after the enactment of the Amnesty Law, by which more than 8,000 people have received full freedom, according to official figures, but whose identities have not been revealed in a public list by the authorities. The NGO Foro Penal, which leads the defense of political prisoners, counts 473 detainees for these reasons as of April 20, of whom 43 are foreigners or Venezuelans with another nationality.