Sends Marta and eight lawyers to court for him, gets held in contempt
Martinelli wimps out
by Eric Jackson
Ten and a half months after he fled the country and after countless delaying motions before the Supreme Court and the Electoral Tribunal, Ricardo Martinelli had a court date on the morning of December 11. The subject was a series of invasion of privacy charges arising from his warrantless electronic eavesdropping activities directed against at least 150 people. He stayed in Miami and sent in former first lady Marta Linares de Martinelli and eight lawyers instead of appearing in court as ordered.
This time the court wouldn’t entertain any of his motions.Supreme Court magistrate Jerónimo Mejía summarily held the former president in contempt (en rebeldía) and adjourned the hearing. Supreme Court magistrate Harry Díaz, the acting prosecutor, said that he would petition a nine-member court plenum to obtain an arrest warrant, which if issued would then lead to a request to INTERPOL for an international “red note” requesting Martinelli’s arrest and extradition. It would then be up to Barack Obama to decide whether to honor the warrant.
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The Cabinet Council quickly approved the president’s high court nominees. The National Assembly might not, but it has been an unusual event when such appointments have run into significant opposition. Photo by the Presidencia.
Cedalise and Russo nominated
for Supreme Court posts
by Eric Jackson
On December 10, after a screening and public input process that elicited a bit of public criticism, President Juan Carlos Varela chose Ángela Russo Maineri de Cedeño as a magistrate for the Supreme Court’s civil bench and Cecilio Antonio Cedalise Riquelme for a vacant seat in the court’s administrative chamber. Russo, tapped to replace Harley Mitchell, is an attorney in private practice who has served as a family court and civil appellate judge and teaches family law at the nation’s Catholic university, USMA. Mitchell’s term expires at the end of the year. Cedalise is a labor lawyer who advises the Ministry of Labor Development and teaches labor law at several universities. He was one of Panama’s negotiators for the US-Panama Trade Promotion Agreement. If approved he would replace Víctor Benavides, who was forced to resign while under criminal investigation by the legislature earlier this year. When Benavides resigned the National Assembly lost jurisdiction over his case to the regular prosecutors of the Public Ministry and those matters are still pending unresolved.
The legislature’s Credentials Committee will begin hearings on the nominations in special sessions starting on December 14 and that process is expected to take about one week. Although there had been some criticism of the process by which the field of 164 applicants had been narrowed down to 10 finalists by a committee composed of Minister of Government Milton Henríquez, Minister of the Presidency Álvaro Alemán and presidential adviser Francisco Sierra, there was little initial criticism of the nominees themselves. Varela, however, does not control the legislature and the appointments could become embroiled in political power plays. However, both the PRD and Cambio Democratico parties, which might have reason to embarrass Varela, are themselves internally divided.
The appointments leave several high court nominations outstanding. The president will have to appoint alternates — suplentes — for both of these nominees, plus replace magistrate José Ayú Prado’s late suplente Gabriel Fernández, who died on at his home of undisclosed causes on December 5. The seat vacated by the conviction on assorted corruption charges of Alejandro Moncada Luna is now occupied by his suplente Abel Zamorano. That post is on the court’s administrative bench. President Varela has yet to make a decision whether to promote Zamorano to occupy Moncada Luna’s post, replace Moncada Luna with somebody else and leave Zamorano as suplente or appoint both a new magistrate and his or her alternate.
Varela insists that he does not interfere in judicial business and does not make any public show of doing so as his predecessor did. But both within the legal profession and among the general public there is a widespread belief that the executive branch does pull strings with the judiciary. It might be a matter of people having become so accustomed to corrupted and manipulated courts that they would not recognize judicial independence if they saw it. But just after he was elected in May of 2014 Varela called upon some magistrates to resign, two people have been forced off of the court and there is an unabated public clamor for accountability for public corruption, including in the courts.
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Felicito a toda Venezuela por la manera en que lograron desarrollar su reciente proceso de elecciones parlamentarias. La calma demostrada, a pesar de algunos desafortunados incidentes, es algo digno de admirar.
Respetuosamente presento unas reflexiones acerca de lo acontecido y de los resultados, que a la luz de los informes ofrecidos hasta el momento, parecen favorecer a los sectores de la oposición política al gobierno actual.
1. Es importante ser conscientes de que hasta el momento, nada ha cambiado: las dificultades continuarán y posiblemente la situación empeorará, hasta tanto no se haya establecido la nueva Asamblea y se puedan aplicar los correctivos necesarios para mejorar el presente estado de cosas. Los triunfadores deberían explicar al pueblo cómo planean, desde el poder legislativo, impulsar mejoras a corto y largo plazo, de manera que la población pueda recuperar el optimismo.
2. Ahora la oposición debe convertirse en una fuerza de propuesta, para la construcción de una nueva realidad para el país. Ahora tiene acceso al poder, desde donde comenzar a producir resultados positivos para todos. Tanto ganadores como perdedores deben dejar a un lado el encono y los resentimientos, y tratar de entender que el pueblo hizo su elección porque está cansado de la situación de tensión, zozobra y parálisis nacional, el caos económico y la inseguridad pública. Se debe asumir que los votantes venezolanos han escogido a los candidatos que consideran pueden actuar como el antídoto para contrarrestar el veneno que se ha vertido hasta ahora y para superar la incompetencia gubernamental, la de ahora y la de antes. El pueblo no perdonará la utilización de su confianza para propósitos de revancha o de oportunismo codicioso. Este es el momento para la calma, el análisis y la acción cívica ejemplar.
3. El momento no es para triunfalismo, sino para ser magnánimos en la victoria. La oposición corrió el riesgo de ganar la elección y así ocurrió. Ahora es el momento de cumplir con las expectativas de un país que de manera abrumadora, y a pesar de las presiones y amenazas, decidió apoyar la posibilidad ofrecida por esa facción. Han heredado un soberano lío administrativo y una población con la paciencia ya agotada. Y todo esto, dentro de un escenario muy difícil, pues el Ejecutivo continúa en el poder, como contrincante y no como aliado.
4. El apoyo popular continuará siendo el fiel de la balanza, de manera que han de explicar al pueblo, claramente, qué es lo que intentan hacer y por qué es necesario hacerlo. No prometan lo que no pueden cumplir. Aclaren inmediata y públicamente cualquier acusación que pretenda confundir y dividir al país. Digan la verdad siempre. Confíen en el alma de su pueblo.
5. No olviden que sin el apoyo popular jamás hubiesen logrado esos resultados. El pueblo quiere un cambio y también exige respeto. Esta es una oportunidad para demostrar la grandeza del espíritu venezolano. Espero que el ejército nacional continúe siendo el garante de la Constitución, de la Voluntad Popular y de la Ley.
Felicitaciones y arriba Venezuela!
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John D. Feeley, career diplomat, former Marine helicopter pilot, Latin Americanist, the man who controlled Colin Powell’s and Condoleeza Rice’s information inflows and who ran the Merida Initiative “War on Drugs” in Mexico. Photo by the US State Department.
John D. Feeley confirmed as American ambassador here
his presentation to the US Senate
Editor’s note: On December 9 the US Senate approved the nomination of John D. Feeley as the next American ambassador in Panama on a voice vote. The following is the transcript of his presentation to the senators.
From the oath I swore as an Eagle Scout, to the one I took upon commissioning as a Second Lieutenant of Marines, and the oath by which I have lived and worked for the last 25 years as a foreign service officer advancing American interests in the Western Hemisphere, my life and career have been marked by public service.
This is an enormous privilege. I thank the president and the secretary for the confidence they have shown in me by their nomination. And it is in that spirit of gratitude that I come before you today to seek your approval that I might continue to serve our great nation as ambassador in Panama.
I am joined today by my wife, a senior foreign service officer herself from San Juan, Puerto Rico, Cherie Feeley. My two sons and my grandson couldn’t be with us but I am sure the number of hits on C-Span has gone up as a result of them watching.
In my current position at the State Department, I oversee the daily operations of our 53 embassies and consulates, from Canada to the Caribbean, from Mexico to Argentina. I work on the operating budgets, the foreign assistance programs, and the personnel assignments that undergird American diplomacy throughout this hemisphere.
The food we eat, the energy we consume, and the goods and services we trade with our neighbors in the Americas have more of an impact, I would argue, on the daily lives of our country’s citizens than any other region of the world. So it is vitally important that we know and understand these neighbors and partners to ensure our own security and prosperity. This is the essence of the President’s Strategy for Engagement in Central America.
And Panama, whose destiny has been entwined with ours since its founding, is among the most critical of our partners in achieving the security, prosperity, and governance goals of the strategy.
Panama is a good news story in many aspects, and if confirmed, I will work with this committee to deepen and expand what is an already excellent bilateral relationship. Panama shares our commitment to protecting democratic freedoms and human rights. In 2014, they defied polls and, with the help of robust international election monitoring, elected an underdog candidate as president who has made education and anti-corruption pillars of his vision for Panama’s future.
You will recall that Panama served as the host of the Summit of the Americas earlier this year, where landmark encounters between civil society organizations and the region’s leaders occurred. Given its stability and relative prosperity, Panama — like the United States — is a destination, rather than a source, of immigration. As such, Panama understands the evils of human trafficking and was recently upgraded on our annual Trafficking in Persons Report. If confirmed, Mr. Chairman, I will continue the good work already begun with our Panamanian partners to eradicate this form of modern slavery.
Panama’s geographic location makes it a bridge in both the physical and metaphysical sense of the word. With a robust economy, Panama has leveraged its bridging function to become a logistical center for the region.
The Panama Canal is a vital commercial corridor for the United States: two out of every three ships transiting the canal will stop at a US port. And the global traffic across the bridge that is Panama will be accentuated by the Panama Canal expansion, due to be completed in 2016. This expansion will bring benefits to Panama and to the United States, potentially doubling imports on the US East and Gulf Coasts by 2029.
Put simply: The expansion will lower shipping costs between the United States and Asia, expand our markets, and create jobs for American workers. Another good news story: Panama is among our best partners working on education and innovation. The literacy rate for 15-year-olds is high for the region, around 94 percent. “Bilingual Panama” is the Panamanian government’s ambitious plan to bring thousands of Panamanian English teachers to study at US universities over the next five years, and we support that effort fully.
Now, Mister Chairman, Panama is not without challenges.
Its bridging location renders it vulnerable to organized crime, narcotics trafficking and money laundering — and the corruption that is attendant to those illicit activities — are also threats to Panama’s security and prosperity.
If confirmed, I will work with Panama to address those ills as well as the challenges, and in doing so, I will support US priorities such as:
our significant retiree and expatriate population that lives in Panama,
I will look to support greater foreign direct investment opportunities for American businesses,
and, most of all, I will seek to work with our Panamanian partners to shore up the integrity of our interconnected financial and banking systems.
I thank you for this opportunity and welcome any questions.
Editor’s postscript: For all of you weird conspiracy theorists out there, this is your big chance! Feeley’s official US State Department biographies don’t list a date or place of birth, so you can be creative with your forged birth certificates. (But Kenya is already taken.) From 1983 to 1990 John D. Feeley served in the US Marine Corps, including as a helicopter pilot, and went into civilian life as a diplomat having been a captain. Since 1990 he has been a foreign service officer with postings in the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Colombia, Mexico and Foggy Bottom. He comes to Panama from his job as the State Department’s number two man for the Western Hemisphere. His wife, Cherie Feeley, is from Puerto Rico and is also a US foreign service officer. He is a graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and the US Navy War College. In 2011 he took over as chargé d’affaires of the American Embassy in Mexico City after Carlos Pascual left as ambassador in the wake of the Mexican government’s wrath over a cable revealed by WikiLeaks, which went into details of the dives the Mexican Army was taking in the “War on Drugs.”
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Father Héctor Gallego, who was disappeared by Panama’s former dictatorship for preaching the universal worth of human beings and for starting a farmers’ cooperative in Santa Fe de Veraguas. He died, but the co-op and his message live on.
Human Rights Day 2015
Freedom makes a huge requirement of every human being. With freedom comes responsibility. For the person who is unwilling to grow up, the person who does not want to carry his own weight, this is a frightening prospect.
Eleanor Roosevelt
On December 10, 1948 the United Nations General Assembly approved the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It was in large part the world’s repudiation of the crimes committed during the Second World War and a vindication of the rights that had been trampled. The committee in charge of drafting the declaration was headed by US delegate Eleanor Roosevelt and the document’s principal author was Canadian delegate John Peters Humphrey. So often a broken promise in the years since then, its principles state the foundation for much of today’s international law and are considered viable and enforceable standards by the courts of many nations. But it only gets honored — or degraded — depending on what living people in all nations and all walks of life do.
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The composition of the next Venezuelan legislature. If the opposition MUD coalition (pale blue) maintains the support of the three autonomous indigenous representatives (gray) or splits off some of the Chavista PSUV deputies (red), they will have the two-thirds needed to override a presidential veto and to control many things — one of which is not the world price of oil. Graphic by Venezuela’s National Election Commission.
Make the Venes an offer they’re unlikely to refuse
The Venezuelan opposition may now have the votes in the legislature to in one way or another force President Nicolás Maduro to leave office before his term is up. The things they are talking about are almost all in the nature of overturning, repealing, forcing from office — all of which are to be expected — but there is hardly any talk of things that they want to do that will promote public services or enhance the Venezuelan standard of living. That’s because they lack the power — as did Maduro’s defeated leftist party — to legislate the world price of oil. As long as prices stay down Venezuelan politicians of every stripe are limited in the things that they can fight about, because oil exports account for almost all of Venezuela’s income.
One of the things that the incoming rightist coalition will certainly want to cut will be TeleSUR international satellite, cable and Internet channel. Venezuela owns 51 percent of that, Argentina (which has had a rightward shift in its presidency if not its legislature= owns 20 percent, Cuba has 19 percent and the rest is shared among minor stakeholders Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua and Uruguay. It has more or less been a Chavista channel rather than the hoped-for plural voice of Latin America. Meanwhile, collapsing US media corporations pay ever less attention to our region and the Qatari, Saudi, Iranian, Australian, British, Chinese and other players do not suffice for Latin America’s purposes. We really do need to put our own perspectives before the world, report the news that’s important for us, promote our culture among ourselves and to others and educated and entertain Latin Americans via our own programming. But it’s a safe bet that for the incoming legislature TeleSUR is a Chavista program to cut, and meanwhile among Venezuela’s debts are some substantial sums to Panama, mostly on the private side of the ledger.
Panama should buy a stake in TeleSUR and take an active role in turning it into the regional public TV channel that it should have been and never was. The bests of our filmmakers, playwrights, actors, scientists, educators, musicians, athletes, journalists and social commentators would gain an entry pass to the world stage if we did this. It’s not to say that there is no such thing as bad public TV or that there would be never be strained international office politics, but Panama does need an international television platform as a part of our cultural development. We should make Venezuela an offer and buy into TeleSUR.
What Republicans would desecrate
Do we want to listen to arguments about public safety from terrorism from white supremacists when that segment of Americana has killed so many Americans in US terrorist incidents? Yeah, yeah. They will play semantic games to say that an end times Christian fanatic who opens fire at a Planned Parenthood clinic, a neo-Confederate who opens fire at a prayer service at a black church or a “sovereign citizen” who shoots nonviolent protesters aren’t really terrorists.
We should not be fooled. Americans are dealing with a neofascist element that is perhaps one-third of the Republican Party’s base. Freedom of religion is only the start of traditional American liberties that these people intend to abolish. At home and abroad, theirs is a program of beatings, imprisonment, torture and murder for racial, religious and ideological reasons.
But think about it like an imperialist. Donald Trump and his cheering crowd would deny entry to Afghans, Somalis, Iraqis, Syrians, Pakistanis, Kurds, Turks, Nigerians, Libyans and many others who worked for America and because of that are in harm’s way from retaliation by America’s enemies. So how many foreigners are going to want to work with the Americans after the sort of betrayal that Donald Trump proposes? His is not really a call to make America great again, it’s mad raving to entertain weird fanatics who believe that since the end of times is well nigh, it doesn’t matter if the country, the planet or humanity itself get destroyed.
Bear in mind…
Your son at five is your master, at ten your slave, at fifteen your double, and after that your friend or foe, depending on his upbringing.
Hasdai ibn Shaprut
And the trouble is, if you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.
Erica Jong
Do not consider it proof just because it is written in books, for a liar who will deceive with his tongue will not hesitate to do the same with his pen.
Maimonides
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To have a veto-proof National Assembly the opposition needs at least 112 seats. They say that they have won that many but it has not been officially confirmed. Photo by TeleSur.
The real test begins for Maduro
by the Council on Hemispheric Affairs
Sunday’s momentous legislative electoral events may have marked a turning point in the history of modern Venezuelan politics. The overwhelming victory of the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) over President Nicolas Maduro’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has arrived at the point of challenging the very essence of the Bolivarian Revolution’s political project at a critical juncture in its history. The country faces alarming murder rates, soaring inflation, and falling oil prices; the combination of the last two factors threatens an economic contraction for the upcoming year.
In the past few years, Venezuela has suffered from increased political polarization as the opposition has become more cohesive. This has led to the formation of two distinct political camps which has facilitated a rise in the size and number of protests and demonstrations against Maduro’s government.
Maduro and the PSUV have accepted electoral defeat despite concerns that Chavistas would attempt to stymie the country’s electoral process. Currently, the country’s institutions seem to be holding fast and not self-destructing under charges and countercharges, a promising signal of what may come.
In the days ahead, both the PSUV and MUD will be severely tested due to the polemic nature of Venezuelan politics. They will have to start from the ground up in order to reconstruct the country and develop a productive working relationship between the two sides, something that has proven all but impossible to achieve in the past. The country as a whole would display a greater sense of responsibility as a civil society that has proven to resist chaos and corruption on more than one occasion. For now, the international community should welcome Venezuela’s commitment to democratic stability while closely following future political developments in the country.
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