Declarada constitucionalidad del artículo 105 de la de la Ley Orgánica de la Contraloría General de la República

La sentencia aprobada por la mayoría de los integrantes de la Sala, contó con la ponencia del magistrado Arcadio Delgado Rosales y el voto salvado del magistrado Pedro Rondón Haaz.

La Sala Constitucional del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia, en ponencia del magistrado Arcadio Delgado Rosales, declaró sin lugar el recurso de nulidad por razones de inconstitucionalidad interpuesto por la ciudadana Ziomara del Socorro Lucena Guédez, contra el artículo 105 de la Ley Orgànica de la Contraloría General de la República y del Sistema Nacional de Control Fiscal publicada en la Gaceta Oficial de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela Nª 37.347 del 17 de diciembre de 2001.


La Sala Constitucional declaró la constitucionalidad del mencionado artículo, que faculta a la Contraloría General de la República para declarar la responsabilidad administrativa de aquellos funcionarios públicos incursos en ilícitos administrativos en perjuicio de la cosa pública, así como para la imposición de multas de contenido económico y la sanción de inhabilitación para el ejercicio de funciones públicas, cuando la gravedad de la falta así lo amerite.

La sentencia aprobada por la mayoría de los integrantes de la Sala, contó con la ponencia del magistrado Arcadio Delgado Rosales, y el voto salvado del magistrado Pedro Rondón Haaz.

El fallo judicial concluye que el procedimiento administrativo llevado por la Contraloría General de la República, para el establecimiento de la responsabilidad administrativa de los funcionarios públicos investigados, comprende tres etapas que GARANTIZAN EL DERECHO A LA DEFENSA Y EL DEBIDO PROCESO DE LOS IMPUTADOS; guardando así plena y efectiva compatibilidad con lo previsto en el artículo 49 constitucional.

Igualmente, asentó el fallo que la norma bajo análisis no puede reputarse como una “norma penal en blanco” como alegó la representación judicial de la recurrente la ciudadana Ziomara del Socorro Lucena Guédez, ; debido a que la garantía de la tipicidad está plenamente satisfecha, en virtud de que el propio texto legal cuestionado prevé los hechos y conductas acreedoras de sanciones.

Por otra parte, el fallo también aclara que la Contraloría General de la República no debe desarrollar otro procedimiento adicional para la imposición de las sanciones accesorias como la inhabilitación, esto debido a que, con el sano desarrollo del procedimiento principal – tendente a la comprobación de la responsabilidad administrativa del imputado- se garantizan los derechos que asisten a los funcionarios públicos cuestionados.

Es de resaltar que tampoco se ve afectado el principio non bis in idem, ya que no se trata de juzgar a un sujeto, en más de una oportunidad por una misma conducta, sino de establecer una pena accesoria como consecuencia de una sanción impuesta por un solo hecho, cuestión plenamente avalada constitucional y legalmente en nuestro ordenamiento jurídico.

Además, la sentencia aprobada por la Sala aclara que la previsión contenida en el artículo 65 constitucional no contiene una única modalidad de inhabilitación que coarte la posibilidad de que el legislador patrio establezca otras formas para sancionar y atacar los ilícitos administrativos; esto es, que puede la legislación establecer otros tipos de de inhabilitación administrativa por malos desempeños en la gestión pública.

Incluso, la Sala también conceptualiza que la disposición constitucional prevista en el artículo 42 de la Carta Magna, está circunscrito a los derechos relativos a la nacionalidad y a su pérdida o extinción, pero que en forma alguna condiciona las limitaciones legítimas que sobre el ejercicio de los derechos políticos, establezcan otros cuerpos legales como lo es el caso de la Ley Orgánica que regula a la Contraloría General de la República.

Con fundamento en las consideraciones expuestas en el fallo, la Sala concluye que la restricción de los derechos humanos pude hacerse conforme a las leyes que se dicten por razones de interés general, por la seguridad de los demás integrantes de la sociedad y por las justas exigencias del bien común, de conformidad con lo dispuesto en los artículos 30 y 32.2 de la Convención Americana sobre Derechos Humanos.

Esta prescripción es en un todo compatible con lo dispuesto en los artículos 19 y 156, cardinal 32 de la Constitución Nacional. Lo previsto en el artículo 23.2 no puede ser invocado aisladamente, con base en el artículo 23 de la Constitución Nacional, contra las competencias y atribuciones del Poder Ciudadano.

Autor: PRENSA/TSJ

Fecha de Publicación: 05/08/2008

Where logic ends, Venezuela begins, Part 2

Breaking News: The mother of all logic busters was revealed yesterday! Where is the Guinness Book of Records when you need it! Get this: 26 law decrees are effective as of yesterday, just before the expiration date of the enabling law, and yet not a single soul in Venezuela, outside the upper echelons of government, knows its content. Wow! participatory democracy at work! That's a real Whopper, Chávez! Congratulations! We didn't see it coming!

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What is Venezuela for you?

Notes on the documentary film ¿Puedo Hablar? May I Speak? Directed and co-produced by Christopher Moore

by Karin Koch

Whenever you're invited to watch a movie about the political situation in Venezuela, you can't help but being overly skeptical. The subject is so controversial and polemic that it lends itself to one sided portrayals of the conflict at hand. So, I was hoping for a film with a different approach which certainly is not an easy task to accomplish as the moderator of the event organized by the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University correctly pointed out. Before the screening, people would approach him with the question: "Is it a Chavista or an Anti-Chavista film?" instead of inquiring about the quality of the film.

Clearly, division serves the so-called Chávez revolution well, but does it solve Venezuela's huge social problems? Admittedly, most of these problems are part of the unfortunate legacy of past governments but they are on the way of becoming the legacy of the current one as well. After all, there are really no more excuses after ten years of so-called revolutionary process.

Unfortunately, most film makers seem to fall prey to the same ideological trap as everybody else and are not able to look beyond the myths and the empty rhetoric. Especially, those who come from abroad seem to be smitten by the very notion of a romantic third world revolution that promises participatory democracy or, even better, socialism of the 21st century, a concept nobody really understands, including President Chávez himself. In the eyes of these film makers, dissidency is synonymous with oligarchy of the CIA-payed, coup-mongering kind.

Conversely, some of the so called documentaries made by some Venezuelan oppositional groups leave a lot to be desired. I've seen some pretty bad ones that can only be described as propagandistic crap. Their narrow focus blames all of society's ills on Chávez and his followers instead of reflecting on Venezuelan society as a whole.

Reality is never black and white and in order to understand political conflict in a society you have to look at it not only from different angles but also within a broader historical context. Present day upheavals can be traced back to a myriad of factors that have shaped our recent history, factors such as population growth, the role of the Social Democratic AD party in organizing Venezuela's first modern political mass movement (this has to be recognized, independently whether you like the Adecos or not), the repressive, authoritarian and corrupt tradition of the military, the impact of forty years of so called democracy within the context of a highly centralized, presidentialist system, the lack of a strong and independent judicial system and, most importantly, the role of the oil fueled boom to bust economic cycles in shaping a culture of clientelism and consumism.

Having said all of the above, I do applaud the producers of ¿Puedo Hablar? May I Speak? for their honest effort at trying to present a more diverse picture of the Venezuelan political spectrum by giving different elements ample opportunity to express their views.

Filmed last year during the Chávez reelection campaign, the opening scene of the film sets you up with the spectacle that Chávez has been subjecting the country ever since he came into power: The eternal campaign. We see the charismatic Chávez warming up to a delirious audience, asking politely: "¿Puedo Hablar? May I speak?". A question coming, ironically, from someone who has been monopolizing the airwaves of an entire nation with excruciatingly long speeches that can only be characterized as a mixture of improvised variety show, incoherent political sermons that defy any logic and insults geared towards everyone who dares to disagree.

By way of contrast, we also get to see the candidate of the opposition, Manuel Rosales, whose lack of charisma and weakness of discourse is painfully evident, addressing his supporters before closing his campaign in the largest rally ever held in recent Venezuelan history with 1.5 million people in Caracas.

Interestingly, the one thing that seems to connect both campaigns, as portrayed in the film, is the hyper emotionalism revolving around the figure of both candidates. In a particularly revealing scene, we see the devastated followers of Rosales gathering at his campaign headquarters shortly after he had conceded defeat, a historic moment as for the first time the opposition didn't immediately cry out fraud without holding any tangible prove in their hands. As expected, emotions are running high and you can feel a sense of betrayal pervading the room. Suddenly, a Rosales supporter shouts out in despair: "Great, he's become a Chavista now!"

These highly charged campaign scenes are nicely juxtaposed with images of common Venezuelan citizens going through their every day struggle, confronting, regardless of their political orientation, such problems as abject poverty, lack of housing and public transportation, lack of job opportunities, rampant crime, environmental disasters, you name it. In a very telling scene of the movie, we see a desperately poor guy, father of three children, standing in front of his dilapidated rancho waiting for the government to build him a new house. He is absolutely convinced that this time Chávez will not let him down as other governments have done in the past. His sister, a Rosales supporter, standing next to him, laughs at his naiveté and complains about the government's failure to improve their miserable life conditions.

In another scene, the film makers visit a Belgian priest who works in the impoverished neighborhood of Petare, in the eastern part of Caracas whose inhabitants, as he explains, belong to the D and E (lower economic) strata according to a scale that divides up the Venezuelan population in five economic groups. When asked what Venezuela represents for him, a question asked repeatedly throughout the film and which serves as a Leitfaden of sorts, he declares his unconditional love for the country which he has come to identify with, after having lived there for 40 years, taking care of the poor. And it's easy to see why; the friendly and creative disposition of the Venezuelan people is another thread that runs through the film.

Interspersed with scenes of regular people are interesting interviews with academics and journalists who offer their interpretations of the political events. Off hand, two come to mind: well respected pro Chávez historian Margarita López-Maya who seems to have second thoughts and is worried about increasingly eroding minority rights and Teodoro Petkoff, publisher of the left leaning newspaper Tal Cual who is also a Rosales campaign adviser and a vocal critic of the Chávez governement. He stresses the importance of maintaining an open dialog between the government and the opposition.

To their credit, the film makers also travel to different parts of the country, visiting the oil rich Maracaibo Lake where they talk to local activists about the environmental disaster that the oil industry is causing there and how it is impacting the indigenous populations. In the Andean city of Mérida, we are introduced to students of Universidad de Los Andes, a hotbed of student revolts (in fact, one of their student leaders, Nixon Moreno is in hiding from the government). In the Amazonian region, we listen to a remarkable woman, a teacher in a small Indian village; complaining about the government’s discriminatory practice of giving preferential treatment to Chávez supporters when distributing school materials. In another scene, a man, most likely a tourist guide, standing in front of a breathtaking landscape that looks like Guayana in the southern eastern part of Venezuela, explains that Venezuelans have an unfortunate tendency to believe in Messiahs who will descend on them and magically go about solving all of their problems. When asked by the filmmakers about his personal opinion on Chavismo, he is reluctant to answer, probably fearing adverse consequences.

In conclusion, the film does offer indeed a snapshot of Venezuelan society at a crossroads as the press release indicates, but snapshots only represent one moment frozen in time and events are moving fast in Venezuela. The election campaign between Chávez and Rosales is already a thing of the past and in true Chávez fashion (never a dull moment), we are moving on to the next campaign: The Constitutional Reform, a highly controversial proposal, currently rushed through the Chávez controlled National Assembly, presented on August 15 by the President himself which, if approved, will change 33 articles of the Constitution. Despite the extremely short time frame given to ordinary Venezuelan citizens to become acquainted with the content of this proposal, it will be subject to referendum in December 2007 and then, who knows what will happen.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by the author of this post do not necessarily reflect the views of the other members of Venered.

Promoción del segundo debate bloguero

La blogósfera venezolana se reúne para debatir la reforma a la constitución presentada por el Presidente el 15 de agosto de 2007, que consta de 33 artículos. Para participar en ese debate hay que estar conectado el Sábado 22-09 a las 4:30 pm hora Venezuela (-4 por ahora, ya que desde el 24-09 serán -4:30) en la sala de skypecast Reforma Constitucional Venezolana, que estará moderando Kareta. (Descarga Skype y crea tu cuenta con anticipación). Si no quieres participar directamente en esta conversación, pero quieres hacerle seguimiento podrás conectarte al streaming de la conversa usando un reproductor de media (Winamp, Real Player, QuickTime, etc).

Agenda
Punto de partida:

• los temas de la reforma están fijados ya.
• La situación: aprobada en 2da discusión.
  

Quizás referéndum para diciembre.

Preguntas

1. ¿Debatimos para ser escuchados y modificar la propuesta o para decidir como votar?
2. Dados los temas propuestos, ¿Cómo debería haber sido el proceso de reforma? ¿El presidente debió orientarnos a poder modificar o sólo hacia poder votar?
3. ¿Cómo contribuir a un debate político amplio, incluyente, desmarcado de la politiquería?

Éste es el link de la sala:

https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=3365156

Y el Streaming:
http://shoutcast1.tidyhosts.com:9038/listen.pls


Escucha el promo del segundo debate:

Click To Play

Escucha la grabación del primer debate:

Click To Play