The Supreme Court did not lift a finger. It simply avoided the issue. At the request of NGOs Espacio Público and Provea to act in favour of transparency in the country, the judges responded by washing their hands of the issue.
On October 29, 2009, these civil society organisations requested the country’s highest court to intervene so the Ministry of Health would publish epidemiological bulletins in the first half of that year. In the appeal filed before the Supreme Court, Espacio Público and Provea stressed that the aforementioned bulletins are a “vital input to health workers and the general public in order to be adequately informed about the existence of epidemic diseases, so as to take the necessary precautions to minimise possibility of infection and thus guarantee the right to health of the population.”
Instead of lending a helping hand, the Supreme Court – with a presentation by Justice Arcadio Delgado Rosales – simply said that NGOs had not exhausted the legal mechanisms available before resorted to highest court in the nation. “For the protection to be admissible, petitioners must exhaust all existing procedural mechanisms available and receive no protection from them, or in case these are not appropriate to restore or safeguard the (potentially) infringed right,” Delgado Rosales argued in his ruling on July 9, 2010.
The only dissenting voice in the Constitutional Court was that of Justice Carmen Zuleta de Merchán, who expressed her disagreement and warned: “Before admitting the appeal for protection, petitioners should request a report to the relevant entity about the reasons for the omission or delay. With this simple action, the authority of the Constitutional Court shall be sufficient to rebut the omission, or to dissipate, with the response, any question of an arbitrary silence; it shall also be fulfilling, in favour of “good governance” and the community, an integrating function of constitutional justice.”
According to Zuleta de Merchán, a simple letter from Supreme Court to the Ministry of Health would have broken the veil that concealed crucial data for the welfare of Venezuelans. However, her colleagues chose to sit idle. Opacity is an epidemic that affects Bolivarian institutions.
Extract of the judgment
“(…) the administrative procedural means are most appropriate, by constitutional mandate, to respond to these claims and any others that arise against public entities in the exercise of administrative functions. It is not admissible, with certain exceptions, to request constitutional protection.”