In the Americas, integrity on the bench

Latin America’s general reaction to Venezuela’s rigged election indicates a shift in favor of judicial independence.

The Monitor's View

Autocrats need friends. Venezuela’s strongman is finding it harder to find them.

Last week, the country’s highest court affirmed that President Nicolás Maduro – who holds “undue influence” over the court, according to the United Nations – won a third term in the July 28 election. Reaction was swift.

Ten governments in Latin America as well as the United States jointly rejected the ruling. Two of Mr. Maduro’s most sympathetic neighbors, Brazil and Colombia, had already expressed “grave doubts” about the official outcome. Only his fellow authoritarians in Nicaragua, Cuba, and Bolivia have stood by him.

Mr. Maduro’s growing isolation in the region fits a trend. In one election after another, voters throughout Latin America have tossed out incumbents in a restless search for honest governance. Their frustration over corruption and impunity may be the force behind a renaissance in judicial independence.

In recent years, “authoritarian leaders have had a hard time getting their way, as the judiciary in several Latin American countries has proved itself to be the best line of defense against democratic backsliding,” noted Rebecca Chavez and Taraciuk Broner in Americas Quarterly last September.

Integrity on the bench has become a political hot button across the Americas. In the U.S., Democrats seek to impose term limits and congressional oversight on the Supreme Court to counter what they see as ideological drift and unethical conduct by some justices. In Chile, as the U.N. noted, judges have acknowledged a need for greater equality in the way courts handle cases for richer and poorer defendants.

Battles over legal reforms elsewhere show the depth of public concern for the role of courts in protecting democracy. In Mexico, outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has proposed a constitutional amendment that critics say would make courts and judges vulnerable to political patronage. The reforms have sparked a broad public backlash. In Peru, legislators are locked over a bill that would put judges under congressional oversight. Last week, courts in Guatemala rejected a third attempt by a notoriously corrupt chief prosecutor to oust the democratically elected president.

These debates mark a welcome shift in direction after decades with “little to no track record of independent Latin American judiciaries that stand in the way of authoritarian governments,” noted a Stanford study published in the Journal of Democracy in January. The authors wrote that in recent years, Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia “have produced robust institutions able to check leaders with authoritarian tendencies, with high courts playing a fundamental role.”

Something similar may now be gathering momentum in Venezuela. Last week, a U.N. fact-finding mission said that Venezuela’s Supreme Tribunal of Justice and the National Electoral Council lack independence and impartiality. The latter institution called Mr. Maduro the winner on election night. Neither the court nor the council has released ballot tallies.

But citizens have. In a plan carefully coordinated by opposition leaders, citizen monitors collected and posted on social media the official counts from nearly every polling station on election night. Those figures, widely viewed as accurate, showed that Mr. Maduro lost the election by a wide margin.

Autocrats strengthen their grip on power through institutional armor. In a decade of rule, Mr. Maduro has co-opted the courts and appointed military brass to Cabinet posts. One member of the electoral council, Juan Carlos Delpino, has rejected the verdict of his peers. “This decision is based on my commitment to electoral integrity,” he said.

In their joint rejection of the court’s decision last week, the regional governments stated that they “continue to insist on respect for the sovereign expression of the Venezuelan people.” As more citizens embrace rule of law, their demands for integrity may be cracking the edifice of an autocrat’s dishonesty.