It is known as veto power that an organization or authority has to prohibit something. The concept is also understood as the act and result of prohibiting (inhibiting, preventing, rejecting).
As for its etymology, we can say that the term veto comes from Latin, from a concept that can be translated as “prohibit”, that is, the verb prohibit conjugated in the first person singular (from the point of view of our language) . The use that this word receives revolves around the right of someone, of a single party, to stop any action, although it is usually found in the legislative field, where the vetoed objects are agreements, measures or proposals.
In this sense, it can be said to “put the veto” on a measure, an agreement or a proposal, to indicate that the party before the competent authority is determined to prevent its development. A word that can be used as a synonym for veto and with great spelling similarity is «vedo», with its respective verb, «to veto», which we can define as follows: impose the prohibition by law, mandate or law; prevent the development of an action or prevent it completely; annoy other people in such a way that it is not easy for them to follow a certain procedure; (in Salamanca) to wean an animal; (in disuse) suspend or deprive someone of the position or exercise of it. For example: “The court overturned the provincial government’s veto of publications classified as ‘offensive'”, “The project to charge a tax to pet owners can be vetoed”, “I do not have veto power: decisions are made by consensus of all members of the board of directors. The notion is often used to name the power of a president to nullify a law or bill already approved by a chamber or other state structure. The veto implies the possibility of annulling a modification or novelty, but not the possibility of promoting it. Suppose that the Constitution of country X allows the prime minister to veto regulations approved by Parliament by a simple majority. In this context, a law is passed so that public officials pay an additional 10% tax on their personal property. The prime minister, arguing that the measure is discriminatory, decides to veto the law. The idea also appears with a veto in the Security Council of Educational Units of the United Nations (UN). This entity has five permanent members with veto power: the United States, China, Russia, the United Kingdom and France. If four nations approve an initiative, but the fifth member rejects it, the veto power is applied to the proposal in question.
There are at least two types of veto, which we define below: absolute, which serves to prevent the enactment and effectiveness of a law; suspensive, which serves to delay, dilate or suspend the moment in which a law is enacted and put into effect. On the other hand, the partial veto is also used to refer to a prohibition that affects only part of the law, such as some of the articles that make it up. In general, the legislative bodies have the possibility of omitting the complication of the veto by voting again on the same law, although in this case it is necessary to obtain a qualified majority, such as two-thirds.
