The decisions of the Supreme Court are felt by Venezuelan consumers. The Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court rejected the claim filed against the use of the biometric system – fingerprint scanners – for the purchase of medicines and food.
The president of political party Copei, Roberto Enriquez, led a group of citizens who on September 10, 2014, requested the TSJ to declare the “inapplicability of the biometric system, or fingerprint scanners” under the premise that it went against “the rights of health, access to goods and services and food safety.”
The petitioners warned that “the State, instead of solving the food and health problem and facilitating access to them, implements cumbersome and uncomfortable mechanisms” that hinder access to essential goods.
However, the presiding Justice of the TSJ, Gladys Gutierrez, dismissed the petition on April 7, 2015 in the following terms: “the arguments lack of the evidence to support the claim and that, therefore, reveals the existence of the aforementioned threat to the population. Thus, the prejudice caused by the implementation of this biometric identification system cannot be assessed, particularly in the rights claimed by the petitioners, such as the right to health, to food and to have quality goods and services.”
One month before Gutierrez issued the ruling, President Nicolás Maduro announced that 20,000 fingerprint scanners would be activated in public and private food establishments. In August 2014, Maduro also stated that “fingerprint scanners are a liberating system”.
Extract of the judgment
the impact caused by the implementation of this biometric identification system cannot be assessed, particularly in the rights claimed by the petitioners, such as the right to health, to food and to have quality goods and services.(…) In this case, the existence of an objective (…) threat cannot be proven. (…) Thus, the Constitutional Court must declare the inadmissibility of the present action for constitutional protection, (…) because accessory issues are treated as the core issue.
