The president of Venezuela, , has managed this Thursday to place allies in two key spaces: the Attorney General’s Office and the Ombudsman’s Office. Larry Devoe will continue to lead the prosecutors in charge of federal judicial cases, to which he had arrived as manager, after the capture of Nicolás Maduro, on January 3. Devoe will be in charge, for example, of any trial against opponents.
Eglé González Lobato, meanwhile, will take over as ombudsman. Both were appointed by the deputies of the National Assembly by a qualified majority, without total support from the opposition bench. After the evaluation of 155 applications and the selection of 69 candidates, those that Chavismo has preferred remain, despite the fact that academic sectors, defenders and opponents had promoted other profiles with credentials.
The lack of consensus delayed the process, which was not free of irregularities and shortcuts, according to jurists. Henrique Capriles Radonski participated for the first time since he became a deputy to present the opposition proposal for the position of prosecutor: the criminal law specialist Magaly Vásquez, one of the applications most supported by the level of academic credentials. “We would lack the time to read. If we want this country to change, this is an opportunity to choose a person without political militancy, independent, to put in front a person who defends the Constitution and the laws of the Republic,” Capriles said when introducing Vásquez, who only obtained 10 votes from the opposition bench.
Chavismo, with 275 of the votes, decided to keep an old government official who, before taking over, headed the National Human Rights Council. From that position he has constantly condemned critical reports on the situation of politically persecuted people in the country. He is a player close to the Rodríguez brothers and is sanctioned by Canada.
For the Ombudsman’s Office, the Libertad bench proposed Marialbert Barrios, a lawyer and linked to political activism for Primero Justicia. The appointment of Eglée González Lobato, a university professor specialized in electoral issues, who has been linked to moderate sectors of civil society that have achieved a certain dialogue with Chavismo without putting too much pressure on it, has been handled by the Government as a concession to the opposition, although she has not had all the votes of this sector. His position has little political weight and possibilities of making the transformations required by the Judiciary, with serious flaws and subject for years to the discretion of the Executive.
News in development.
