Comments by "Stephen Jenkins" (@stephenjenkins7971) on "David Pakman Show"
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@Junebug89 "President Evo Morales of Bolivia seems obsessed with staying in power.
In 2016, he called a referendum on a constitutional amendment that would have eased term limits in the country’s Constitution and allowed him to run for a fourth time.
After 51 percent of the voters rejected the amendment, President Morales came up with a new plan. In September, his supporters in Congress brought a lawsuit in the Plurinational Constitutional Tribunal seeking to revoke the Constitution’s term limit.
Mr. Morales had already brought a lawsuit to the high court in 2013 to bypass the two-term limit. That time the constitutional court concluded that the president’s first term, from 2006 to 2010, did not count because it took place before the 2009 Constitution came into force.
Now Mr. Morales’s supporters claim that the term limit discriminates against the president and undermines his political rights under regional human rights standards. They rely on a provision in the American Convention on Human Rights, the main human rights treaty in the Americas, which says that political rights can “only” be limited under very specific circumstances.
The interpretation they promote seems far-fetched. The clause was designed in 1969 to prevent abusive governments from arbitrarily barring opposition candidates, not to impede constitutional re-election limits designed to prevent the rise of autocrats.
Many Latin American politicians have bypassed term limits, at times undermining the rule of law in the process.
Álvaro Uribe of Colombia amended the Constitution to seek a second term and, in 2010, sought a referendum to put a third term to a vote. The Constitutional Court stopped him. Yet many in Colombia believe that by lifting the presidential mandate once, Mr. Uribe undermined the checks and balances in the Colombian Constitution that were designed to ensure that presidents are held in check by officials nominated by their predecessors.
Similarly, Hugo Chávez of Venezuela managed to eliminate term limits in 2009. At the time, he was also busy with a larger project of dismantling the checks on his power. So much damage had already been done that a few months later, the Supreme Tribunal he had packed with his supporters issued a ruling that dismissed the separation of powers as an “instrument” established to “protect individualist interests of the ruling class.”
Mr. Chávez died of cancer in 2013, but had he survived he would probably still rule Venezuela. The erosion of checks and balances he carried out has enabled his successor, Nicolás Maduro, to go further still so that he is now able to intimidate, censor and punish his critics with impunity.
In 2015, Rafael Correa promoted a constitutional reform to allow indefinite re-election in Ecuador. After mass protests he had to compromise by ensuring that the new provision could apply only to future presidents. Yet he warned that if the opposition won the 2017 presidential race, Congress could call for new elections, and he would “run again and win.” Mr. Correa’s candidate, Lenín Moreno, won and is surprisingly among the few presidents in the Americas who have sought to establish term limits where they are lacking.
What makes Mr. Morales’s strategy unusual, however, is that he has the nerve to invoke human rights to cling to power.
There is transparent hypocrisy in his argument that international human rights law bars the Constitution’s term limits. In the past Mr. Morales’s administration has frequently contended that sovereignty should trump rights.
In 2013, the Bolivian president said that the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights was an “instrument of domination” and that he would consider abandoning it. More recently, after Secretary General Luis Almagro of the Organization of American States tweeted that the results of Bolivia’s 2016 referendum should be respected, the Bolivian justice minister, Héctor Arce, accused Mr. Almagro of trying to “trample the sovereignty of Bolivia.”
Yet Mr. Morales’s move is not unheard of. In 2009, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua also played the human rights card. He successfully brought a lawsuit to the country’s Supreme Court of Justice to lift the term limits set forth in his own country’s Constitution. Mr. Ortega ruled in Nicaragua throughout the 1980s and has won two re-elections since he regained the presidency in 2007. When his current term ends, he will have had 24 years in power.
Mr. Arce, the justice minister, has promised O.A.S. members that Bolivia’s constitutional court would rule with “absolute independence and liberty.” Yet doubts remain. The sitting magistrates were appointed in 2011 through a widely criticized process that was controlled by government supporters in Congress."
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@Junebug89 Imagine being this willfully blind about how power accumulates over time. Newsflash; when someone with dictator-like tendencies has the power to influence media and has a habit of making opposition leaders accused of crimes. Which is quite useful in the dictator's handbook.
"The Attorney General’s Office has repeatedly used a 2010 anti-corruption law to prosecute alleged crimes committed before the law was enacted. International human rights law, however, prohibits such retroactive application of changes to criminal law, unless doing so is beneficial to the defendant.
In October 2016, the Attorney General’s Office used the law to charge businessman and opposition leader Samuel Doria Medina with “anti-economic conduct” for allegedly transferring US$21 million from the government to a private foundation when he was planning minister in the government of President Jaime Paz Zamora in 1992.
In May 2015, Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, former president of Bolivia and current opposition leader, was charged with “anti-economic conduct.” Prosecutors argued that officials in his administration harmed the “interests of the state” by signing four oil agreements with foreign companies.
In July 2018, the Attorney General’s Office asked the Plurinational Assembly to try Carlos Mesa, also a former president of Bolivia and current opposition leader, for harming the “interests of the state” when his administration expelled the Chilean company Quirobax from the country in 2004. In 2015, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) had awarded Quirobax compensation for being expelled from Bolivia."
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@hatinmyselfiscool2879 Oh, Morales "himself" didn't order anything, or do anything, sure. rolls eyes He only had his muppets do what needed to be done. Wow, it's almost like you're coming at this completely disingenuously to try and act like the obvious dictator isn't an obvious dictator.
"The Attorney General’s Office has repeatedly used a 2010 anti-corruption law to prosecute alleged crimes committed before the law was enacted. International human rights law, however, prohibits such retroactive application of changes to criminal law, unless doing so is beneficial to the defendant.
In October 2016, the Attorney General’s Office used the law to charge businessman and opposition leader Samuel Doria Medina with “anti-economic conduct” for allegedly transferring US$21 million from the government to a private foundation when he was planning minister in the government of President Jaime Paz Zamora in 1992.
In May 2015, Jorge “Tuto” Quiroga, former president of Bolivia and current opposition leader, was charged with “anti-economic conduct.” Prosecutors argued that officials in his administration harmed the “interests of the state” by signing four oil agreements with foreign companies.
In July 2018, the Attorney General’s Office asked the Plurinational Assembly to try Carlos Mesa, also a former president of Bolivia and current opposition leader, for harming the “interests of the state” when his administration expelled the Chilean company Quirobax from the country in 2004. In 2015, the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) had awarded Quirobax compensation for being expelled from Bolivia."
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