Weekly Report - 12 August 2003

The supreme court has issued a tight deadline for the legislature to produce a new electoral council, the first prerequisite for a referendum on Chávez 's permanence in power.

The first real step towards a referendum on whether President Hugo Chávez will remain in office - the selection of a new electoral council - is now up against a deadline. The supreme court has given the national assembly until 14 August to fulfil its duty to produce the appointments (so far blocked by the resistance of the smaller opposition parties). Otherwise, the court has said, it will hand over the matter to its constitutional panel, which will make provisional appointments, valid enough to call the referendum and oversee it.

This had always been a possibility, though nobody favoured it. Venezuela's constitution allows the supreme court to remedy the `omissions' of the legislature.
The ruling Movimiento Quinta República (MVR) has begun to wave a counter-argument: that this does not enable the court to `invade' the exclusive powers of the assembly. The chief prosecutor has sided with the court's interpretation, and even in the MVR ranks, cooler heads have been pointing out the obvious: it is the supreme court that decides what is and what isn't constitutional.

Just in case the assembly fails to meet the deadline, the court has initiated consultations, seeking nominations from far and wide - which could suggest that it will not confine itself to selecting the `fifth person' government and opposition have failed to agree upon. The MVR, meanwhile, is pursuing a two-track policy: one track is using the court's ultimatum to try to get the assembly to close the matter itself; the other is to proclaim that any attempt by the court to `usurp' the assembly's powers will be `tantamount to an institutional coup' and could trigger a `mass response'.
President Hugo Chávez , following an already usual pattern in cases of confrontation between the powers of state, is away touring foreign places. If the pattern holds, he should return in conciliatory mood. A hint: Yesterday Vice-President José Vicente Rangel excused himself from opining on the matter, on the grounds that `it is a problem between the legislative and judiciary powers.'

One thing the spat has made clear is that, for all the reservations of the opposition, the supreme court is not a puppet of the Chávez government. For the warring parties, doing nothing and allowing the court to intervene could be a way of enabling things to go forward while having someone beyond themselves to blame if the outcome fails to meet their expectations. Whichever way it turns out, it is highly unlikely that the time will suffice to hold a referendum before the end of this year.