No one may deny that Venezuela is currently suffering from a serious disease: “the reform syndrome”. This ailment is featured by the irrepressible need to throw away all one has, believing that with new things all will change for the good of all.

Morbid conditions do not always have inescapable damaging or lethal effects on health; sometimes an illness may lead to heeling and that is why one says, for instance, that febrile conditions may even have good effects as long as the high temperature does not destroy the brain cells.

Reform is seen in Venezuela as a way to achieve, through exclusive public power decisions, a better way of living “in the best of possible worlds”, as Candide would say. Reform has its most connoted spokesmen in politicians, both those in government as in the opposition. It is not hard to voice out for reform when all the people are unsatisfied with the life they lead and, of course, want to change it.

We do not deny that a deep reform is required in Venezuela and that is the changing of the Venezuelans way of being. But then politicians do not have this kind of reform in mind.

Let us see. The last episode of the “reform syndrome’s” mutating virus has been observed at the level of the judiciary. The most clear and irrefutable diagnose of an illness in Venezuela is that of justice. It is so ill stricken that it is almost agonizing. But our political physicians or witch doctors feel sure that with a deep reform of the law dealing with justice —the bad thing is that practically all the law does— we will be able to have a judiciary worth Arcadia’s. There are talks of a reform of the Criminal Procedure Code, based on the German accusatory system. A bill has been under discussion for some time at the Legislative Commission of Congress as a draft of a new Venezuelan Criminal Procedure Code —if it is not to be known as Strafprozessordung Gesetzbuch—, copied from the German model. In words of the lawmakers, this new code will provide us with the clean criminal justice that is so much needed. But, without criticizing now the cons and pros of this draft, a question comes to our mind: Is it not simpler, if one wants to observe immediate results, to amend a few provisions of our criminal law?

The fundamental ill of Venezuelan criminal justice is the absolute disrespect for some of the most sacred human rights, of due process guarantees. The Venezuelan Constitution and international treaties having the binding effect of domestic law guarantee certain rights that some statutes —and all judges— disavow: the right to be presumed innocent until proven guilty, the right of defense, the right to a due process, the right to equal treatment under the law. Venezuela ignores the principle of presumption of innocence when the common occurrence is to try the suspects depriving them of freedom, when the warrant of arrest without freedom on bail is practically the rule instead of the exception, as it should. The right of defense is refused in our country when the investigated subject is prevented from knowing of what crime he is accused, when he is barred from access to the record and not entitled to be assisted by an attorney —all this is permitted only after the investigated subject is imprisoned, that is when the warrant of arrest has been executed. Venezuelan judges, applying legal provisions that are void as unconstitutional, grant freedom on bail to a bank robber but deny it to the subject being investigated, under the Law for the Safeguard of Public Property, for presumably having used public funds under his custody for a public purpose other than that provided therefore in the budget —an action that practically no civilized country in the world considers criminal. Those who defend the new code —VSpoGb— will tell us that all these anomalies will disappear when it becomes in force. But then, is it not easier and less hazardous to take simpler action having more immediate effect? First, judges could refuse to apply criminal provisions that violate the Constitution and the international human right treaties, and they are entitled to do so under the power they have of “diffuse” control of the constitutionality of the law. Our efficient lawmakers could amend certain provisions of our criminal legislation, in order that the requirement of secrecy in preliminary investigation no longer applies to the defendant, that being tried in freedom becomes the rule, ceasing to be the exception. These are simple amendments that may not be deemed as part of the “reform syndrome”. The bad thing is that useful "drugs" as these are not being administered because they have not been authorized by the "Food and Drug Administration" of political conveniences and vested interests.