Caracas Chronicles

Katy says: I don’t typically comment on stuff from other countries, but this news item about Bolivia is tangentially related to Venezuela.

For those who can’t read Spanish, Bolivia’s Supreme Court has denied a request by the Morales government to grant “supra-constitutional”, “originarian” powers to Bolivia’s Constitutional Assembly. In other words, the Court says that Bolivia’s Assembly must work within the bounds of the current Constitution because “originarian” powers can only be given to an Assembly when “a State is being created”, such as when Bolivia itself was created in the 1820s. It clearly said this was not the case right now.

This strikes me as a major blow to the Morales administration’s attempts to establish a revolution in the mold of Hugo Chávez. Let’s recall that the beginning of the process in Venezuela did not come about when Chavez was elected. The process really began when the Supreme Court at the time decided to grant the Constitutional Assembly all-encompassing powers, causing justices such as Cecilia Sosa to resign in disgust.

This decision paved the way for a Chávez-controlled Assembly to do away with all existing powers, including the recently-elected Congress, the Prosecutor General and the Supreme Court itself. As a result, we have had to put up with the unchallenged powers of the Ivan Rincons, Isaías Rodriguezes, Clodosbaldo Russians, Francisco Carrasqueros and other assorted yes-men.

The Bolivian Supreme Court seems to have learned something from our histoy.

PS.- Speaking of Chávez’s yes-men, I was surprised to learn while I was in Caracas that Jorge Rodríguez’s wife works in Miraflores. She is Chávez’s chef. That’s some bond the three of them have.