By Luis Manuel Aguana
The Constitution of 1819 or
Constitution of Angostura established for the first time centralism in
Venezuela, reflecting the thought of El Libertador. Where did the centralizing
character of our political class come from? In Angostura 1819. From there the paradigm
was born. Bolívar never rejected the decentralized and federal model
established in the first Constitution of 1811. He rejected that this model be
applied to the reality of the country at that moment:
"The First Congress in its Federal Constitution consulted more the
spirit of the Provinces than the solid idea of forming an indivisible and
central Republic. Here our Legislators yielded to the inconsiderate
determination of those provincials seduced by the dazzling glow of the
happiness of the American People thinking
that the blessings he enjoys are due exclusively to the form of
Government and not to the character and customs of the Citizens". (see in Spanish Discurso de
Angostura in https://storicamente.org/sites/default/images/articles/media/1880/Bolivar_Discurso_de_Angostura.pdf).
In the Constitution of Angostura it
appears for the first time in our political institutionality that the "President is the Commander in Chief of
all sea and land forces" and is the "Chief of the general
administration of the Republic". (see in Spanish Sección Tercera, Artículos 1 y 4, Constitución Política
del Estado de Venezuela de 1819, 15 de Agosto de 1819, https://tinyurl.com/y84ps5z3).
What was the background to Bolívar's
approach in his Speech in rejecting a model that did not fit our political
reality at the time? That the Constituent Congress of Angostura adapt the
political system to who we were and the problems we faced in 1819. Bolivar the
citizen, Bolivar the statesman, hands over the command and destiny of Venezuela
to the Sovereignty of the People represented in that Constituent Congress of
Angostura of 1819, explaining to them the importance of that change:
"Representatives of the People! -You are called to consacrate, or
to suppress whatever seems to you worthy to be preserved, reformed, or
discarded in our social covenant. To you belongs the correction of the work of
our first Legislators; I would like to say, that it is up to you to cover a
part of the beauties contained in our Political Code; for not all hearts are
formed to love all beauties; not all eyes are able to bear the heavenly light
of perfection."... "Horrified by the divergence that has reigned and
must reign among us by the subtle spirit that characterizes the Federative
Government, I have been dragged to beg you to adopt Centralism and the reunion
of all the States of Venezuela in a single and indivisible Republic. This
measure, in my opinion, urgent, vital, redeeming, is of such a nature that,
without it, the fruit of our regeneration will be death”.
And before that request the
Constituent changed the system and the political model, centralizing the State
and establishing a fundamental text capable of facing the war of independence,
delivering the power to the President of the Republic, under the control of a
Congress.
Venezuela's political reality - and
the world's - changed in 200 years. In less than a year, on August 15, 2019, it
will be two centuries since the promulgation of the Constitution of Angostura
and even our political class has not understood that the country has changed,
that the Venezuelan people's trousers have grown and that it is necessary to
adapt again the political system and the fundamental political text to the
realities of the country. Hence the need to reconvene Popular Sovereignty and
debate the next 200 years of political institutionality. This was understood by
the Liberator in 1819, only 8 years after the first Constitution.
Is that an exaggerated approach? The
fact that there is no political genius in Venezuela that resembles the
Liberator does not imply that the problem does not exist and that we face it.
And it is not a question here of avoiding dealing with the historical accident
represented by Hugo Chávez and the 1999 Constitution, much less the possible
communist Constitution that is being cooked up by Nicolás Maduro's spurious
National Constituent Assembly. No! It is precisely to reject that accident
becoming a reference in our line of historical evolution.
When the group of Venezuelans that
constituted the National Constituent Alliance-ANCO proposed the rescue of the
federation and the decentralization of power, it is because we believe that
Venezuela is now prepared for what the Liberator indicated in Angostura was the
best system on the planet but that he rejected for the situation that the
country had since 1812:
"The federal system, although the most perfect and most capable of
providing human happiness in society, is, nevertheless, the most opposite to
the interests of our recent states", Simón Bolívar, Cartagena Manifesto,
15 Dec. 1812.
What is the current situation? The
exacerbation of centralism in the 1999 Constitution, which suspended a
consistent decentralization process that had been underway since the 1961
Constitution, and which, if it had materialized with a constitutional change
before 1998, would have halted the aspirations of a coup plotter to the
Presidency of the Republic, ruined and destroyed the Nation in 20 years. The
Public Treasury in the hands of only one person, whoever this is -and worse if
he is an ignorant like the one we have now- in the 21st century, with all the
complexities that this involves, is to say at least foolishness. A profound
revision of the territorial and population distribution of the municipalities
is required so that they can respond to the needs and quality of life of the
citizens. It is required that the income distribution pyramid be inverted,
constitutionally establishing the municipalities and the citizen the greatest
bulk of the resources and power for their administration, then to the States
and finally to a central federated power. That is the way modern states work
well. The federal system is the one that provides the greatest sum of happiness
possible in this century. That's the difference from the 19th century when the
Liberator lived.
Those are
just a few examples of the realities of this century that we have not addressed
in our Constitution, still living anchored in the past. But they faced it in
Angostura when the constituents in their own century changed at the behest of
the Liberator the model and the political system to the realities of their
time. The small big difference is that we don't have Bolívar's genius. But we
are his heirs and that is the challenge that history has imposed on us...
Caracas,
November 12, 2018
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario