Venezuela: Supreme Court of Justice exerts pressure on Juan Guaidó

In the last 18 months, a second Venezuelan Supreme Court presided over the laws of the country through the miracle of cloud computing. Its 33 lawyers live in the United States, Panama, Colombia and Chile. Every 15 days, the court meets by videoconference.

Known as the Venezuelan Court of Justice in Exile, the agency has sent the country's military leaders to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He also condemned Nicolás Maduro, a man who still has the recognition of Russia, Cuba and China as president of Venezuela, to 18 years in prison. Until this week, few had paid attention to this countryless court. Your logo Twitter This is not verified.

However, this court in exile is about to become relevant. On January 11, he asked Juan Guaidó, president of the National Assembly, to badume the interim presidency.; and as more and more countries recognize their legitimacy, there is a desire to recognize the exiled court as well.

Legitimate Exhortations of the Supreme Court @not a word no longer prolongs the application of Article 233 of the National Constitution and, therefore, badumes the presidency of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/wgjMPlvRj1

– TSJ_Legítimo (@TSJ_Legitimo) January 11, 2019

Consider the January 4 statement of a group of 12 Latin American countries and Canada, known as Group of lima, formed in response to the Venezuelan crisis. They called Maduro not to be sworn in for a second term. He also affirmed the legitimacy of the court in exile, on the grounds that it "had been constituted in accordance with the Venezuelan constitution".

Carlos Vecchio, recognized by the US Sunday, as the diplomatic representative of Venezuela in Washington, he told me in an interview that the interim government considered this judicial system by Skype as the supreme court of his country. The court, he said, played a fundamental role in the leadership of the National Assembly during the crisis and confirmed that "what we are doing is constitutional". The president of the court, Miguel Ángel Martín, declared that the court considered itself as "the guardian of the constitution".

The court had already determined that the re-election of Maduro in May was not legitimatebut on January 9, he announced the end of his term. It is on this date that "Maduro's illegitimacy has crystallized," Martín said. The court ruled that the National Assembly should consider Venezuela's presidency as vacant, a precondition for the application of article 233 of the Venezuelan constitution, for which Guaidó was appointed acting president.

"Maduro is a despot, a tyrant who surpbaded Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin"

This confrontation dates back to 2015, when the opposition won two thirds of the seats in the National Assembly. Almost as soon as the results arrived, Maduro and his party began to delegitimize the legislature. First, his supporters in the National Assembly sat on the high court composed of incompetent judges. Then, these judges decided that Maduro could resurrect a plebiscite originally held to rewrite the Venezuelan constitution during the tenure of his predecessor, Hugo Chávez. After the formation of this "Constituent Assembly", the Maduro Court granted this body the powers of the National Assembly, including the appointment of Supreme Court judges.

In 2017, Maduro decreed that he had the power to rewrite the constitution (unlike Chávez, who amended the constitution by referendum in 1999 and tried unsuccessfully to do so again in 2007).

In response, the National Assembly appointed its own judges for this court. Maduro threatened to arrest them and the judges escaped. Since July 2017, the entire exiled court, as well as its executive committee, have gathered in cyberspace.

Now, this high court is guiding the transition to democracy in Venezuela, using a modified constitution to consolidate Chavez's revolution. It's a beautiful irony. "The departure of Maduro will be the result of the processes outlined in the constitution promulgated by his predecessor," said Thor Halvorssen, president of the New York-based Human Rights Foundation, born in Venezuela. One could say that the strongman of Venezuela turns against him thanks to his mentor.