Venezuela attorney general says officials threatened her family
Opposition leaders calling for return to streets
CARACAS:
Venezuela’s attorney general on Monday said intelligence officials had threatened and harassed her family after she openly challenged President Nicolas Maduro over the country’s political crisis. A staunch figure of the ruling party, Attorney General Luisa Ortega has been branded a traitor for becoming the highest public official to break ranks with Maduro. She has accused him and his allies of acting unconstitutionally in their standoff against the opposition in recent months of deadly antigovernment protests.
Last week, she filed a challenge against his effort to rewrite the constitution, branding it undemocratic. The court dismissed the appeal on Monday. Ortega said members of her family had received threatening telephone calls and had been harassed and pursued. “I hold the executive responsible for any injury or attack that my family might suffer,” she said in an interview with Union Radio. “This is a matter that must be resolved with me, not with my family,” she said. “They are being pursued by patrols that appear to be from SEBIN,” she added about the state intelligence service. “They are sending them messages directly from SEBIN, which answers to the government.” Although Ortega, 59, said she herself had not received threats, some government officials have said on television that she should be imprisoned.
Constitutional struggle
Maduro is accused of controlling the Supreme Court, which has fended off numerous legal and legislative moves against him over the past year and a half. Clashes at daily protests by demonstrators calling for Maduro to quit have left 67 people dead since April 1, prosecutors say. The latest casualty was a 49-year-old man who died Monday night in the Caribbean city of La Guaira, prosecutors said, without clarifying the circumstances. The opposition deputy Jose Manuel Olivares said he died after being suffocated by tear gas.
Violent riots also occurred in the afternoon in Caracas, where hooded protesters partially set off an administrative building of the TSJ. Protesters blame Maduro for an economic crisis that has caused desperate shortages of food and medicine in the oil-rich country. Maduro says the crisis is a US-backed conspiracy. He has launched moves to set up an elected assembly to reform the constitution in response to the protests, but his opponents say that is a ploy to cling to power. A survey by pollster Datanalisis indicated that 85 percent of Venezuelans opposed that plan. The president retains the public backing of the military.
Legal battles
Analysts said last week that Ortega’s suit could build bridges between the opposition and disgruntled officials and widen divisions in Maduro’s camp, making it harder for him to stay in power. But the court on Monday rejected her appeal as “incompetent”. That ruling “removes any doubt about the absence of judicial remedies” for the political crisis, said constitutional law expert Jose Ignacio Hernandez. “It is a clear attempt to discredit the attorney general.”
Ortega responded to the ruling by upping the ante - and the political tension. She presented a further legal challenge aiming to fire 13 of the court’s judges, who she argued were named without her approval. Her motion challenges a controversial decision in 2015 to name the judges, whom the opposition says are biased in favor of Maduro. A dozen countries expressed “deep concern” about Ortega’s “harassment”, prosecutors said, including Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Portugal and Paraguay.
Scuffles outside court
The president is resisting calls for elections to replace him, vowing to continue the “socialist revolution” of his late predecessor Hugo Chavez. Opponents of Maduro had gone to the court earlier to try to add their names to the list of plaintiffs in Ortega’s lawsuit, but were kept away by military police. Anti- and pro-government activists exchanged blows outside the court in the latest in more than two months of street unrest.
Parliament was set to discuss procedures for appointing new judges to the Supreme Court yesterday, while opposition leaders are calling for a return to the streets today. “They do not want the people to demonstrate against the constitutional assembly. Look at how many people reject it,” said one young demonstrator, Maria Rodriguez. “Get away, the streets belong to the people, not to the bourgeoisie,” yelled a rival supporter dressed in the traditional red of Chavez supporters and holding a copy of the constitution in his hand. “What there is here is revolution.”