Cuba and Venezuela: And God Created Them…

Cuba and Venezuela: And God Created Them… / Cubanet, René Gómez Manzano

Cubanet, René Gómez Manzano, Havana, 5 Abril 2017 — In recent days, the
absence of a true rule of law has become evident in the two countries of
"Socialism of the 21st Century," an absence that reached the highest
levels of arbitrariness and injustice: Cuba and Venezuela. In the second
of these the iniquity took place at the highest level, the
Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court.

The brand new Chavista magistrates ruled: "As long as the contempt and
invalidity of the proceedings of the National Assembly persist, this
Chamber will ensure that the parliamentary powers are exercised directly
by this Chamber or by the body that it designates." In short, the court
replaced the parliament with itself.

And in passing, the High Court also withdrew immunity from the country's
parliamentary deputies. It was a coup d'etat pure and simple; only not
one undertaken by the military or the congressional branch, but by the
judicial. Of course, it didn't happen on the judges' own initiatve, but
because Maduro ordered it, because it is already known that the supposed
independence of that power is now a fiction in the homeland of the
"Liberator," Simon Bolivar.

The voices of protest did not hold back: in Venezuela, National Assembly
President Julio Borges called the shameful ruling "trash" and ripped it
up in front of the television cameras. The protests of students and
others who disagree began. At the international level, the Permanent
Council of the Organization of American States was convened, and Peru
withdrew its ambassador from Caracas. Even complacent the mediators
Torrijos, Fernandez and Rodríguez Zapatero rejected the gross maneuver.

But not only democracy supporters weighed in. A character as little
suspected of being anti-Chavez as the Venezuelan Attorney General Luisa
Ortega (yes, the same person labeled the "Eternal Commander" as "the
most humanist man that has ever existed on the planet" and totally
supported the unjust imprisonment of Leopoldo López) described what
happened in his country as a "rupture of the constitutional order."

Urgently convened, the Venezuelan Defense Council called on the Supreme
Court to "review" the statements that left Parliament without functions.
The obedient magistrates, in a fulminating manner, applied "what I meant
to say was…"

In Cuba, on the other hand, recent illegality had a lower level, in both
directions of the word. Lady in White Lismerys Quintana Ávila, also
urgently, was subjected to a spurious trial and sentenced to six months
in prison — the maximum allowed penalty — by a docile Municipal Court.

As a precedent for this injustice, we must remember the new trick that
the political police use against these admirable women: At the outset,
they impose a fine for a misdemeanor that does not exist. After the
refusal to pay the illegally imposed penalty, the defendant (in this
case, Lismerys) is taken to a Municipal Court to be tried.

Now the offense charged is "breach of obligations arising from the
commission of misdemeanor," and is provided for in article 170 of the
current Penal Code.Under this provision, "anyone who fails to comply
with the obligations arising from a resolution that has exhausted its
legal process, issued by a competent authority or official, relating to
contraventions" may be punished.

According to the final sentence of that rule, "if before the sentence is
pronounced, the accused meets the obligations derived from that
resolution, the proceedings will be archived." The purpose of this,
obviously, was not to establish a mechanism to send one more person to
prison, but to dissuade her from not paying the imposed pecuniary penalty.

But it is already known that, in Cuba, "whoever made the law, set the
trap." In the case of someone who disagrees and says so, any
misrepresentation of the correct sense of the rules is valid for the
Castro regime's authorities. What real chance to pay the fine had
Lismerys or her loved ones if she were detained and the latter did not
know what her situation was?

We know that the repressor who "cared for her" (who calls himself
"Luisito", but whose real name is known (unusual in itself) — Ariel
Arnau Grillette) was truthful in the text messages with which he
harassed this Cuban mother. We know what they said thanks to the
inventiveness of the brave fighter Angel Moya Acosta: "the desicion to
send you to prision is in my hands," he wrote. A phrase in which we do
not know what to admire more: his creative spelling or the confidence
with which he says what everyone knows, but usually shuts up about …

However, what is decisive in this case is not what the murky State
Security intended, but the submission of a court to the design of that
repressive body. This is how the "organs of justice" of Cuba and
Venezuela, once again, have become brothers in ignominy.

Translated by Jim

Source: Cuba and Venezuela: And God Created Them… / Cubanet, René Gómez
Manzano – Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-and-venezuela-and-god-created-them-hemosoido/