The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice concluded the restructuring process of the Acción Democrática (AD) party, ordered by the highest judicial instance of Venezuela in 2020.
The magistrates reached this conclusion after verifying the holding of internal elections in the aforementioned party, which took place between April and June last year.
As a result of this internal process, Bernabé Gutiérrez was elected as the national general secretary, Leomagno Flores, president, and Clever Lara, organization secretary.
While in the National Executive Committee (CEN) were Óscar Ronderos, José Gregorio Correa, José Gregorio Ruiz, Óscar Pulido, Jesús Brito, Horangel Salas, Nixon Maniglia and Rubén Lima, among others.
The restructuring process of the white party was ordered by the Constitutional Chamber on June 15, 2020, according to sentence number 71 drafted by the then magistrate Juan Mendoza.
The Chamber made this decision as a result of an amparo action filed by two militants of the white tent identified such as Otto Marlon Medina Duarte and Jesús María Mora Muñoz, who denounced the expulsion of directors of AD-Aragua.
The plaintiffs of the constitutional protection denounced in their writing the violation of the principles of democracy and sovereignty of the electoral activity, with respect to the nominations of the aspirants to be elected to the positions of popular election, and the right of the political organizations to nominate its candidates in the electoral processes with the participation of its members in accordance with the provisions of Article 67 of the Constitution.
In this regard, the magistrates responded that the aforementioned complaint falls within the set of liberties “of a supra-individual nature whose transcendence and repercussion for the collective is subsumable in the sphere of diffuse or collective rights or interests.”
Because of this, the Chamber decreed a precautionary measure of constitutional protection consisting of:
1. Suspension from the National Directorate of the white organization made up at that time by Isabel Carmona (president), Henry Ramos Allup (general secretary) and Bernabé Gutiérrez (organizational secretary) whose term had expired since 2013.
2. Appointment of an ad hoc Board of Directors to carry out the restructuring process chaired by Bernabé Gutiérrez and made up of Oscar Ernesto Pulido Urdaneta and Stellyn Antonio Bolívar Blanco.
3. Said ad hoc Board of Directors may use the electoral card, the logo, symbols, emblems, colors and any other concept of Acción Democrática.
4. The ad hoc Board of Directors is ordered to carry out the internal consultation for the necessary updating and modification of the current statutes, for the purposes of their adaptation to the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and other current laws.
6. The ad hoc Board of Directors is empowered to carry out the simple administration and maintenance acts of the facilities, until the merits of this case are decided; consequently, the prohibition of alienating and encumbering the assets of the organization for political purposes Acción Democrática is ordered.
7. The acts of expulsion or partisan exclusion, suspension, among others, carried out by the directors of the national political leadership of AD against its militants and, specifically, those that fall on the citizens filing the amparo, that is, are provisionally suspended. , Otto Marlon Medina Duarte and Jesús María Mora Muñoz.
The last time that there were internal elections in AD was on August 4, 2009.
Two years after those ordered by the Constitutional Chamber, the magistrates reviewed whether the Board of Directors chaired by Bernabé Gutiérrez complied with what was ordered by that judicial instance.
In this regard, the magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber verified the execution of these restructuring tasks and whose evidence was reflected in the file, among which are:
1) Notice published in the newspaper El Universal corresponding to Sunday, March 27, 2022, in which the entire AD structure was summoned to an extraordinary national steering committee, which took place on April 2, 2022 in Caracas.
2) Copy of the minutes in which the installation of the National Executive Committee was recorded, carried out on April 2, 2022, in which it is reported that “… of the 284 delegates contemplated in article 34 of the Party Statutes Two hundred 242 (…) members of the CDN are present, (…) for which reason the (…) Secretary of National Organization declared the existence of the regulatory quorum for the celebration of the National Steering Committee (CDN)”.
3) Copy of the report that, regarding the celebration of the CDN held on April 2, 2022, was prepared by the National Electoral Council that same April 2, 2022, in which, after having observed “compliance with the scheduled agenda ”, concluded that “the development of the activity was carried out normally”.
4) Copy of the AD statutes which were sanctioned by the National Steering Committee held on April 2, 2022.
6) Copy of the Proclamation Act of the Members of the National Executive Committee of AD as national authorities for the period 2022-2028, dated June 11, 2022, prepared by the National Internal Electoral Commission.
7) Copies of the minutes of each of the sectional internal electoral commissions corresponding to the different states of the country, in which the respective proclamation of the members of the Sectional Executive Committee of each of said states of the political organization as sectional authorities is recorded. for the period 2022 – 2028.
Upon carrying out such verification, the magistrates concluded that “the object of the present amparo must be declared decayed, since the matter that motivated its filing has already been resolved in accordance with what was ordered, and, in this sense, the process of restructuring of the aforementioned organization. That’s how it’s established.”
