Caracas Chronicles

In an attempt to quell any opposition to the results announced by the National Electoral Council (CNE), and to calm down international allies like Brazil and Mexico, Nicolás Maduro requested that the Electoral Chamber of Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ) to review and certify the official results that declared him the winner of the July 28th presidential election. The government is trying to sell the TSJ as the ideal independent institution to settle the controversy. Yet, for decades, Venezuela’s judiciary has turned into a branch of the executive and of the ruling party PSUV. 

1999-2004: Taking over the highest court

Chavismo’s takeover of the judicial system began as soon as it came into power. In August 1999, the recently created Constituent Assembly created the Judiciary Emergency Commission to investigate the performance of Supreme Court judges, the Judiciary Council, and around 1200 national judges. Cecilia Sosa, the Supreme Court’s president back-then, deemed the Commission as unconstitutional: the Constituent Assembly, she said, had only been elected to draft a new Constitution. But, when the judges voted to decide if the Commission’s emergency decree was constitutional, she couldn’t whip a majority. Sosa quit soon thereafter and declared the Court self-dissolved. “The Supreme Court of Justice has killed itself to avoid being murdered,” she said.

In fact, following the rules put in place for the “transitory regime,” the new legislature—now deemed the National Assembly—proceeded to name the authorities of the judicial power without following the formalities required by the new Constitution. In November, the National Assembly (AN) approved a special law to designate the official judges of the new Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), allowing the Assembly to elect new judges with just an absolute majority. More importantly, while the Constitution demanded a Committee of Postulations made up of members of different sectors of civil society to choose new judges, the Assembly used its special law to create one made up of only 15 lawmakers. The result was a supreme court—and other institutions—mostly packed with Chavista sympathizers. 

2004: full control

But full control wasn’t achieved until 2004. Following the events of April 2002, which saw Hugo Chávez briefly ousted from power, the Venezuelan president sought to judicially punish every military officer and civilian who allegedly participated in the coup against him. Yet, the four high-ranking officers that he sought to see stowed away for good were let go by the TSJ, whose judges voted 11-9 to drop proceedings against them. In fact, after his right hand Luis Miquelena turned against Chávez after the April 11th massacre, many of the judges—who were loyal to Miquelena—broke ranks. 

In Chávez’s eyes, this meant war. In May of 2004, the Chavista-controlled AN forced the removal and the appointment of judges through a law. In December, the AN illegally expanded the TSJ from 20 to 32 judges, designating 17 new judges for active duties and naming deputies for all 32 judges. Full control was now in effect.

2005-2017: protecting government instead of society

Since then, Chavismo has used the TSJ—Venezuela’s supreme court—to benefit the ruling party and to crack down on dissent. 

An extensive study carried out by the scholars Antonio Canova, Luis Herrera, Rosa Rodríguez and Giuseppe Graterol in 2014 showed the TSJ’s bias towards chavismo. From 2005 to 2013, its Constitutional Chamber (in charge of upholding the Constitution and accordingly limiting government overreach) decided 20,798 cases. Of these, only 9% were related to controlling public powers. Of that 9%, only 7% of claims were found to “have merit” or “some merit” in favor of the claimant. However, not a single one of the 20,798 decisions ever effectively limited government powers. Not once was Chávez found to violate the Constitution in any way, not a single government act was ever struck down or delayed, not one of the controversial Law-Decrees (legislation dictated directly by the President) were ever annulled.

“The Supreme Court of Justice has killed itself to avoid being murdered.”

Cecilia Sosa Gómez

From 2005 and 2013, the Electoral Chamber (on which Maduro now relies to certify his win) decided on 1,863 cases. Only 50 of the 301 definitive decisions were related to electoral matters. Of those 50 electoral cases, only one ended up going against the government, and it didn’t even affect the PSUV but Podemos—then an allied party—over a controversy regarding election of a deputy to the Yaracuy State Legislative Council.

2017: sponsoring dictatorship

In this context, all the opposition needed to fix the court’s extreme bias was to secure a majority in the AN. They did so in December 2015. Yet, soon thereafter, the TSJ admitted a claim related to “irregularities” in the election of three opposition lawmakers in Amazonas state, effectively taking down the opposition’s supermajority. When the opposition ignored the order to keep those three deputies out and started a new parliamentary period with its supermajority in January 2016, the TSJ declared the AN to be “in contempt” and stripped it of its powers. 

By January 2021, the TSJ had declared 145 rulings against the National Assembly chosen by a majority of Venezuelans. In fact, in April 2017, the TSJ unconstitutionally stripped the Assembly from its powers and assumed them. The opposition condemned the move and called it a “coup d’etat” and the TSJ backtracked, eliminating the ruling. Nevertheless, the decision ushered the 2017 protests which were fiercely repressed by the government. 

Then, in July, the government set up their own parallel legislature, the National Constituent Assembly, using it to pass laws unopposed. 

Eight years later, the Electoral Chamber is yet to decide on the dispute in Amazonas. In the meantime, the TSJ was key to make the regime cross the threshold to dictatorship. 

2024: A PSUV militant as an arbiter

The  fact that they never decided the case shouldn’t really surprise anyone, considering it no longer matters to PSUV’s political goals, which the TSJ only serves to advance.

In fact, in 2022, the TSJ reduced its number of judges from 32 to 20 as part of a “reform.” Yet, 12 of the 20 judges had already been chosen as judges in the past and these included Tania D’Amelio, former rector of the CNE, and Gladys Gutiérrez, the president of the TSJ until 2017. Its former president Maikel Moreno remained in one of the chambers.

But if the Tribunal’s PSUV bias wasn’t already obvious from its judges and their actions, the Venezuelan government recently appointed Caryslia Beatriz Rodríguez as the Tribunal and the Electoral Chamber’s President. Rodríguez is a very outspoken government supporter who ran for and held public office under the PSUV’s ticket in Caracas. A staunch Chavista, Rodríguez has repeatedly stated her loyalty to Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro. 

This is the person leading the “inquiry” into the election results. 

Very independent indeed.