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Weekly Report - 03 March 2016 (WR-16-09)

VENEZUELA: Supreme court ringfences itself

In what might be described as a ‘sui generis’ interpretation, the constitutional chamber of Venezuela’s supreme court (TSJ) has decided that the legislature’s constitutionally-mandated powers of oversight are limited. In something of a creative interpretation of the relevant articles of the 1999 constitution, the TSJ said that these powers may be used solely to summon members of the executive, and do not extend to the courts or electoral authorities. Conveniently, that would prevent the opposition-controlled national assembly from questioning the dubious fast-track appointment by the previous assembly of a batch of clearly government-sympathetic supreme court magistrates, who have since acted to stifle the assembly.

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