Venezuela Birthers: Ex-Supreme Court Justices Ask CNE to Invalidate Maduro Candidacy By Carlos Camacho Latin American Herald Tribune April 2, 2018
CARACAS -- Former Venezuelan Supreme Court magistrates Cecilia Sosa Gomez and Roman Jose Duque Corredor moved Monday before the CNE electoral board to invalidate Nicolas Maduro’s presidential bid for the May 20th election, arguing that Maduro was born in Colombia and thus ineligible.
The legal maneuver is sure to rekindle the old debate of Maduro’s nationality. He has never shown his birth certificate and has offered contradicting reports as to where in Caracas he was born: El Valle, a low income neighborhood on the West said, Maduro said first. Los Chaguaramos, a nearby, better off borough, he said later.
In 2013, the Supreme Court said it had no copy of Maduro’s birth certificate, admitting he had been sworn in as President with only a copy of his “cedula de identidad”, the Venezuelan national ID.
The request is addressed to the CNE’s National Electoral Board and sub-headed: “Matter: Constitutionally, Nicolas Maduro Moros is not eligible for the office of President of the Republic of Venezuela.”
In the text, Sosa and Duque write that Maduro’s bid is “ostensibly affected by vices of unconstitutionality”.
The gist of the argument is what Sosa and Duque term the “violation of the condition of ineligibility for the office of President of the Republic by Nicolas Maduro Moros because of having dual nationality.”
Maduro, they write, is “constitutionally impeded” “to carry out the office of President of the Republic of Venezuela for holding dual nationality, a circumstance which, evidently, impedes his postulation as Presidential candidate.”
The former justices include two links to news articles from Peruvian and Colombian newspapers regarding the Colombian nationality of Teresa de Jesús Moros de Maduro, Maduro’s late mother.
The Venezuelan Constitution states that only Venezuelans can aspire to the highest office in the land.
Sosa and Duque state that, under the 1991 Colombian Constitution, Maduro has been automatically conferred the Colombian nationality on account of being the son of a Colombian mother and having lived in Colombia for a period of time. Maduro lived in Cucuta, Sosa and Duque wrote, went to school there and even played basketball with a high school team there.
"By virtue of the previously exposed, we request from this electoral body to please admit and declare proceedings in the present request that the act of admitting the postulation of Nicolas Maduro Moros as candidate for the Presidency of the Republic be declared absolutely null because of its manifest unconstitutionality.”
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