The recent pronouncement of the Alianza Nacional Constituyente Originaria, ANCO, informing Venezuelans of its transformation into a political movement, with all that this implies, is of profound significance for all of us who have been part of this movement since its founding from the heart of civil society (see in Spanish, ANCO Communiqué, Without comprehensive institutional renewal, Venezuela will remain in ruins, in https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/2023/03/comunicado-anco-sin-renovacion-integral.html).
We have always promoted the struggle of civil society with the guiding idea of being civilian controllers of the actions of those who call themselves our political representatives and to participate in the political life of the country, presenting concrete proposals to be taken into account by those to whom we have given the power of our political representation, exercised from the public authorities.
Many times I have pointed out from this tribune, that since the popular approval of the 1999 Constitution, Article 5 of the Constitution gave us Venezuelans the right to directly exercise our sovereignty through the mechanisms provided for in the Constitution and the laws, especially Article 70, through which the organized civil society may convene and directly participate in ".... the election of public offices, the referendum, the popular consultation, the revocation of the mandate, the legislative, constitutional and constituent initiatives, the open town hall and the citizens' assembly whose decisions will be binding..." (Art. 70, CRBV 1999).
Directly means WITHOUT THE INTERVENTION OF THE PUBLIC POWERS: "Sovereignty resides non-transferably in the people, who exercise it directly in the manner provided for in this Constitution and in the law, and indirectly, through suffrage, by the organs that exercise the Public Power..." (Art. 5, CRBV 1999). However, this unique and constitutional right has been constantly mediatized and violated during these 23 years by the regime, in spite of the multiple actions taken by the civil society, preventing, among other things, the people from expressing democratically and directly their rejection of this form of government and its executors.
ANCO, as a civil society, was supported by this right defined in the current Constitution, to the point of being a leading participant in two popular consultations whose mandates are still pending execution, and has been the main promoter of the constituent initiative, which in our opinion would be the ideal way to resolve peacefully, equitably and constitutionally the political crisis that the country is going through.
Unfortunately, this solution has been stubbornly rejected by the political actors who in bad times hold the country's opposition representation, because it goes against the interests of more than 60 years of a political class that refuses to change, despite the destruction to which the country has been subjected at the hands of criminals.
Even having the right as a civil society to participate in the political life of the country because it is guaranteed by the Constitution, ANCO has decided to continue trying to crystallize its project of structural change in the power relations of the country, which gives the common citizen the power to manage their quality of life, now entering the field of political representation and the exercise of power, the only way that those who have denied us as simple citizens the right to political participation understand, and seek in due course the vote of Venezuelans to make it happen.
When we organized ourselves as a political movement and presented our project El Gran Cambio, Una propuesta para la Refundación de Venezuela (see full text in Spanish at https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/p/documentos-fundamentales.html) to the consideration of the country, no longer as organized citizens of the civil society but as the proposal of a consolidated team of reformers with a new political and territorial vision of a free Venezuela of the future, who seek nothing more than to realize a common project to offer to the Venezuelan people, beyond individual personalities, with a deep sense of justice and respect for Human Rights. It will be difficult to find a project of structural change in the political, economic, social and territorial life of the country in any of the political offers that have been presented to the Venezuelan people.
Perhaps the meaning of these words can be made more meaningful by listening to the dissertation of Dr. Adela Cortina, creator of the term "aporophobia" (phobia of the poor) and Professor of Political Ethics at the University of Valencia, Spain, on January 15, 2020, in a lecture entitled "Building an Authentic Democracy" for the student body of La Nau Gran at the University of Valencia, which I recommend you watch in full (see in Spanish Adela Cortina, Building an Authentic Democracy and Politics, at https://youtu.be/45E_r3IdSco), and from which I extract the following from his extraordinary exposition:
"It is a real ideological confusion to try to say that individualism is the basis of social life. IT IS NOT TRUE. We are persons in relationship, we are persons in bond related to each other, and we recognize ourselves as persons because others recognize us as persons.
Therefore, the people would have to be a group of people who know they are in relation, who know they are in bond, and who know they have to have at least a few common projects, what I would call some minimums of justice that we have to try to achieve together. Because if those minimums of justice do not exist, then there is no common project, and then there is no people, but a mass of individuals who can function more or less emotionally or aggregatively, but who do not have any kind of common project.
And what would be the common project? Well, I think it would be very clear in a democratic society. What should the common project be? I remember that it has to be a project of justice and not of happiness; happiness is personal. The good life is a personal project. One has to decide what good life project he wants, and discuss it with his loved ones and with his significant others so that they can advise him and advise each other because life is made inter-subjectively but each one has to have his own personal life project.
However, there is a dimension, which is the dimension of justice, which is the dimension of politics and the dimension of the city, and in this sense we have to find in each of the countries a minimum of justice on which we have to agree because otherwise we have no common project. And what are these minimums of justice? Well, we can talk about them, but I think that from the outset it is elementary that they are the Civil and Political Rights, the Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. That as a minimum....
...I spoke in a book entitled "Minimum Ethics", I always say it, in 1986, there were people who said, of course, that it is a minimum ethics because since we are in such a bad situation, at least some minimums. No, no. Minimum ethics means that we cannot fall below those rights without falling into INHUMANITY, because they are minimums of justice. That is the task of politics! Of national and international politics. And that is the way, building a society in peace, because peace is built from justice. We cannot speak of a peaceful society if there is no basic justice" (emphasis added).
Well, we propose to the Venezuelan people a common project, El Gran Cambio, with a minimum of justice, established in the Civil and Political Rights, and Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Venezuelans, and that must be guaranteed, because that is really the task that POLITICS must have in any country. In Venezuela, all parties have lost the notion of the exercise of politics and the essence of what it is for, beyond promoting candidates at all levels, distorting so much their performance, to the point of becoming a traditional "take away you to put me" hollow, of exercising power for personal gain, without any proposal beyond the face of their candidates.
This common project must be understood, developed and implemented in each State of Venezuela, according to its idiosyncrasy and regional potential, by the citizens, in full exercise of their sovereignty. And in this sense, the political movement initiated by ANCO will function as a moderator and catalyst of this change, which will take place to the extent that the citizens give us the political power to carry it out.
That is the difference between a group of the organized civil society that proposes a project without the certainty of its realization because it is not there for the exercise of power, and a political movement with concrete representation willing to carry it out with the support of the citizens, understanding the exercise of politics as the instrument through which power is administered as a service to the citizen and not to be served. This is the next level that civil society as a whole must reach in order to improve the exercise of politics in Venezuela.
Caracas, March 7, 2023
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