Locksmiths open doors to Supreme Court
It took a locksmith to get him through the doors, but Ovidio Bonilla, purported to take up the presidency of El Salvador's Supreme Court today. He was accompanied by Sigfrido Reyes, the president of the National Assembly from the FMLN. It was the National Assembly's vote in April 2012 which placed Bonilla in this position. The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court has declared that April vote invalid.
Today El Salvador has two competing Supreme Courts. One with Bonilla and the magistrates from the 2006 and 2012 elections declared invalid by the Constitutional Chamber. The other with former president Belarmino Jaime and magistrates and substitutes elected in 2009. That court is led by Florentín Meléndez, who was named interim president after the expiration of Jaime's term this weekend.
Comments
I pose a question - what if the Sala de lo Constitucional had, instead of issuing the rulings in 2012-23 and 2012-19 that they did, ruled instead that while the elections of 2006 and 2012 were tinged with impropriety and violated the spirit of the constitution (since there is in fact no actual language in the constitution which was actually violated), but that invalidating those elections would be disruptive of society and dangerous to the excercise of responsible governance, and ordering the legislature instead to amend the constitution to fix the inherent deficiencies are the root cause of this comedy of errors? Perhaps if the Sala were interested in real jurisprudence, and not in playing to the political interests of ANEP, FUSADES (strangely silent these past few days, aren't they?) the Chamber of Commerce and ARENA - i.e. the business interests - the legislature, the press and the talking heads could have spent all this time and energy on real problems, like unemployment, the stagnant growth rate, foreign investment, las maras.....