Institutional safety net

By Luis Manuel Aguana

Versión en español

Many of you know what the trapeze net is used for in circuses. Anyone who has seen the spectacle of trapeze knows what it is. It is a safety measure so that the trapeze artists who perform these extraordinary acts where the precision of movement and the physical dexterity of the performers are combined, can perform their acts without risking their lives. If something goes wrong, the net will always be down to stop them in case of a fall of many meters. As the net is there, we all enjoy the prowess of the show. However, when the net is removed, the spectacle changes. The spectators are no longer there to see how well the trapeze artists do and enjoy a good show, but to contemplate someone risking their life. The net changes the perspective of the spectator.

Someone could tell me that it's not like that. That removing the protective net makes the spectacle exciting. And it would be true. Human beings have been like that since time immemorial, like the one in which the Romans threw the Christians to the lions at the Colosseum in Rome. People like to push things to the limit. Thank God humanity advanced and institutions were created that function as these safety nets, to prevent people from killing each other. In other words, to establish a limit to the functioning of society regardless of people's personal desires. This net makes people's behavior objective and establishes the institutional order.

But what happens when the net is gone? There are no barriers and only the primitive remains, the fascination of contemplating the spectacle where someone will live or die, without really perceiving the true background of the execution, as in the example of the trapeze artist, because when removing the net people forget that the latter is what they are really looking for. With the net everything is expected to work well and calmly, because there is a safe mechanism in case something does not go as expected.

When we try to explain that a Popular Plebiscite Consultation is that net of institutional security that Venezuelans would have when calling for Popular Sovereignty, people perceive that we are putting a "requirement" "one more stage" to the option of force that has apparently been decreed as the solution to the Venezuelan problem, when in reality what we are proposing is that in the act of trapeze artists where the spectacle of our tragedy is being executed, we have the necessary security so that this option of force has the formal backing of the Venezuelan people, if that is what we have to achieve.

Neither Juan Guaidó, nor the National Assembly, nor anyone else, can commit Venezuela to hand over our future to Castrocommunism, and even less so since our Constitution contains the mechanisms to directly exercise our sovereignty. Hence, we demand a Popular Consultation established in Article 70 of the Constitution, completely arbitrated by Civil Society with the help of international organizations, so that it is the people who decide. This principle is known internationally as the Self-Determination of People.

When the deputies of the National Assembly decided for us on October 1st to change the route that was established on January 23rd, and reaffirmed with the Law of the Statute for the Transition of February 5th, it completely changed the political game in Venezuela, and the worst thing is that it has passed under the table as an insignificant fact. And that is precisely what the parties that negotiated in Oslo-Barbados want.

What follows now is the appointment of an CNE arranged between the regime and its official opposition for a call for elections, without having eliminated from Venezuela the cancer of castro-chavismo-madurismo. The Plebiscite that is proposed is precisely for that: that the people decide the cessation of the power of that cancer. Likewise, the proposed plebiscite would order the constitution of a transitional government and free elections after having fumigated the CNE, and restructured the entire electoral system. How can one expect a foreign intervention to take place without having that arranged beforehand? Will the international force do that for us? Or will it be "as we come we are seeing" as we Venezuelans have become accustomed? As I replied to an esteemed friend who asked me this question: to ask for an intervention without the authorization of the people is to let the one who is armed decide for us. And the one who decides has it. This is what has happened in the world in all the moments of history in which that decision has been taken by those who have the rifles. I also want to get out of this but managing the events that will be unleashed, especially when you don't have the rifles. Look only at Europe after World War II and how and by whom the world was divided.

It is clear that such consultation would not be permitted by the regime. That is why it MUST BE TAXED FROM OUTSIDE, for example, as part of the range of solutions being discussed within the recently convened TIAR Consultation Body of the OAS, under penalty of continuing to strangle them, and with the guarantee that external force would be applied in the event of ignorance of the mandate emanating from that Consultation. This was our proposal in the Public Letter addressed to our Ambassador to the OAS because we consider this scenario to be completely pertinent (see in Spanish Carta Pública a Gustavo Tarre Briceño, in http://ancoficial.blogspot.com/2019/10/comunicado-anco-carta-publica-al.html).

That is why the Consultation itself must establish the Sovereign's authorization so that the countries that decide to enforce the mandate of the people do so with the full authorization of Venezuelans. Not even the UN Security Council, with the votes against China and Russia, could do that. This consultation cannot be seen in any other way than as a suitable mechanism to arrive constitutionally at the eviction of the power of the castro-chavista-madurista regime -not only of Maduro- by means of a sovereign decision of the people.

That's why we can't take away the institutional security grid from the only way that exists to remove the transnational criminal cartel that has taken over Venezuela. The solution that we Venezuelans need comes from outside, but that doesn't mean that this is a no-man's land where Venezuelans stand in the queue of the decisions that others make. We must protect with it the only thing that is left for Venezuelans after the razing they have done with us: dignity and the right to decide our destiny.

Caracas, October 8, 2019

Blog: http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/

Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com

Twitter:@laguana