TSJ should not get a penny more from the World Bank

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela Electronic News Posted: Tuesday, March 25, 2003 By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue

Consorcio Justicia general director, Carlos Ponce  has called on World Bank projects manager for Latin America, Waleed H. Malik not to "give a bolivar more to the Venezuelan Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ)." He claims that funds to reform the Judiciary are being wasted away. 

"Only 10.3% of Venezuela's judges are titular ... the rest 87.7% are supply judges ... it shows that TSJ  magistrates can't keep their promise to reduce the provisional character of Venezuelan justice to 20%." 

The National Assembly (AN) decreed a judiciary emergency  in 1999 and set up a Restructure Committee whose first task was to review the situation of the country's judges and ended up suspending a good number. 

Ponce says he has been studying the system starting from 1907 thru to the current period, and has reached the conclusion that in Venezuela there is no such thing as independent or autonomous courts when judges are relieved of their posts for simply passing sentences that a determined economic or political group does not agree with. 

"Three years have passed and the Judiciary still lacks a basic structure, a strategic vision and more important, stability of judges ... as long as we have provisional judges, there cannot be any stability." 

In a letter to TSJ president Ivan Rincon, Ponce has criticized the fact that the TSJ has administered 2.4% of the national budget over a three-year period and have little to show for it. 

"The crisis continues, few changes can be observed and there is still limited access for ordinary citizens." 

Commenting on the TSJ's  call yesterday for a national consultation process, Ponce wryly contends that any consultation will lack transparency ... "the bottom line is the TSJ's need to present the World Bank with a program asking for more debt."