By Luis Manuel Aguana
I loved the term "interception"
coined by Dr. Blanca Rosa Mármol de León to prevent the expression of Popular
Sovereignty by those who should rather guarantee it. According to the DRAE
(Dictionary of the Royal Spanish Academy), Interception: "1. f. Action and effect
of intercepting". And that is what we Venezuelans have suffered on
behalf of those who claim to represent us in that collegiate body called the
National Assembly: a permanent act of interception of what Venezuelans are
asking for. The three meanings of the verb intercept clarify it: "1.
tr. Taking possession of something before it reaches its destination; 2. tr.
Stopping something on its way; 3. tr. Interrupting, obstructing a way of
communication”. All this and much more has been done by the Deputies of
the National Assembly with what we have requested.
The eternal problem of the differences
between what the representative does with what the representative desperately
asks for, and what the representative does not do for reasons ranging from the
orders of his party to the most abject corruption. Democracies dissolve to the
extent that the representatives rise up with the sovereignty that the people
granted them. During the period of the 40 years of the parties, there really
was a dictatorship in relation to the representation that for 5 years they
assumed on behalf of the electorate, but there was a minimum of respect towards
what the people asked expressed in the ballot boxes.
If one chooses representatives, it is to
advocate for their interests, not for those of the party or anyone else.
However, this evil is not only of Venezuelans, it is actually of the system of
political representation, and other countries suffer from it as well. For
example, in Argentina, a few years ago a local action party emerged in Buenos
Aires, founded by young people who use technological platforms to make their
representatives obligatorily vote for what the citizens want (see in Spanish ¿Qué
es el partido de la Red? in https://youtu.be/2ylBnaMutuA). At
some point in the future we will see similar demonstrations in Venezuela.
However, although we are still politically far from that, we are not from the
point of view of what is enshrined in our Constitution.
The Constituent of 1999 established in a
deliberate and taxative manner, that Sovereignty be exercised DIRECTLY without
the interception of the Public Powers of the State. Hence, Article 4 of the
1961 Constitution, which stated that "Sovereignty
resides in the people who exercise it, through suffrage, by the organs of
Public Power", became Article 5 of the 1999 Constitution as "Sovereignty resides untransferably in
the people, who exercise it directly in the manner provided for in this
Constitution and the law, and indirectly, through suffrage, by the organs
that exercise Public Power".
This change took a transcendental turn in
what we citizens can do. And Venezuelans still haven't realized that! That
single article freed us from the tyranny exercised until then exclusively by
the Public Powers for 5 years, giving the people the ability to influence the political
events of the country, at any time. But it also took away from the Constitution
a security mechanism to allow the President of the Republic, manipulating the
people, to override any provision of control that the Constitution granted only
to the Public Powers of the State.
Hence, the laws of People's Power, Communal
Councils, or any other form of assembly manipulated by the Executive Power, put
any manifestation of the people above the Public Powers established in the
Constitution. Losing the favor of the people, the regime could no longer resort
to this manipulation, but the device is still there. And without us practically
realizing that power, we have given ourselves exclusively to the representation
made by our "representatives," when the system we had, had gone from
being representative to being participatory as of 1999, with all the mechanisms
that the Constitution itself gave us. But remember that this was not a gracious
concession of chavismo, it was a trap of popular manipulation of power when
Chávez moved popular mass.
By virtue of all that, if we do not agree on
what our representatives do we can directly exercise Sovereignty "in the
manner provided for in this Constitution, and in the law". And those forms
are provided for in Article 70, among which is the Popular Consultation. And
beyond that, without the intervention of the Electoral Power, because the
Popular Consultations are not within the framework of the attributions of that
power (Article 293, Numeral 5).
Venezuelans do not have, by virtue of this
Constitutional norm, to wait for the deputies as representatives of the people
to convene a Popular Consultation or any other act that suits us. WE CAN DO
THAT. Nor do we have to wait for them to approve or not Article 187#11 or any
other provision we consider necessary to solve the country's political problem
within the framework of the humanitarian crisis that oppresses us. See the
power that the citizen has if he knows how to conduct himself in an adequate
manner with precise objectives.
So what's stopping us from doing it? Organize
to do it. And one of the most difficult things is to organize Civil Society to
do something coordinated. From ANCO we have proposed the basis on which to
sustain the Sovereign's call for this Popular Consultation WITHOUT THE
NECESSITY TO RESOURCE ANY CONSTITUTEED POWER OF THE STATE and we have called it
the Citizen's
Statute for Constitutional Restoration and Democratic Restoration. (see in Spanish
Estatuto Ciudadano in http://ancoficial.blogspot.com/2019/04/estatuto-ciudadano.html).
According to Article 333, "every
citizen invested or citizen invested or not invested with authority, shall have
the duty to collaborate in the re-establishment of its effective validity".
The movement that we promote, clearly from the Civil Society, argues that
principle for the re-establishment of the effective validity of the Constitution.
In practice, we are opposing the Citizen Statute to the Statute that governs
the Transition of the National Assembly in order to impose a consultative way
that, with the hand of the citizens, provokes the Cessation of Usurpation,
informing our allies abroad of this citizen power.
Likewise, Article 326 of the Constitution gives Civil Society direct
co-responsibility, together with the State, in National Security "to
comply with the principles of independence, democracy, equality, peace,
freedom, justice, solidarity, promotion and conservation of the environment and
affirmation of human rights...", principles that have been violated by the
regime of Nicolás Maduro Moros. The State has ceased to fulfill its
responsibility to the Nation in the safeguarding of its Security in the
territory and it is up to us to assume it, exercising our right to summon the
Depositary of Sovereignty to restore the Rule of Law in Venezuela.
As you will see, we have not only the
responsibility but also the duty to intervene in the face of this monumental
upheaval of the political class using the mechanisms laid down in the
Constitution. And that has nothing to do with what some call
"anti-politics”. No. It is the construction of new bases on which to build
the State when all the institutions are destroyed, including the political
parties themselves. It is not a question of reconstructing the country to what
it had "before", but of building it completely from scratch on
completely new bases, hand in hand with the citizens and without intercepting
the will of the venezuelans. It is a complex task, and this would only be the
first step...
Caracas, October 26, 2019
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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