I have no choice but to appeal again to principles when I notice that many people -even of firm convictions- have been seduced by the electoral carnival of the regime, trusting that this may be a solution to the very serious situation of the country. When in doubt, go back to principles. That has been my fundamental compass and philosopher's stone of thought in the face of the mountain of garbage that is thrown at us, capable of convincing you of anything.
Because we cannot forget something in all these years: the electoral route has been for decades the ONLY solution that the political opposition factors have proposed to Venezuelans to get out of the monumental mistake we made by electing a coup leader in 1998. From the rigged recall referendum of 2004 to the next elections of 2024, it has been almost 20 years of trying the same thing, until now, with the same result.
However, a group of Venezuelans, grouped under the idea of a concrete and different project for the country (see in Spanish El Gran Cambio, una propuesta para la Refundación de Venezuela, en https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/p/documentos-fundamentales.html), We proposed to the country a sort of clean slate, based on invoking the popular sovereignty that resides in the Venezuelan people and that can be exercised directly through the political mechanisms established in the Constitution and not indirectly through its elected representatives. We propose to the country the call -again, because it had already been called in 1999- for a National Constituent Assembly of an original nature.
Venezuelans remained in the past with Article 5 of the 1961 Constitution, where sovereignty could only be exercised through representatives elected by means of suffrage. This changed in 1999 with the direct exercise of sovereignty through the incorporation of the political mechanisms established in Article 70, where the constituent convocation by the Venezuelan people is foreseen, without the intermediation of the Public Powers.
When we proposed the constituent solution, we did not do so with the purpose of overthrowing any government, no matter how horrible it might be, as the current one is, but with exactly the same idea for which the people voted in 1998: to set a different course for the country. But, as all Venezuelans must accept, it resulted in a monumental mistake, which must be corrected.
Now, in this dispute in which we Venezuelans find ourselves, where we are in the middle of a war with the regime to achieve a candidate that effectively represents the feelings of the opposition people, it would seem -because it is only a perception that everyone considers a reality- that if this milestone is achieved, then we will be at the doorstep of making the barriers that prevent democracy and freedom from being achieved fall down definitively. But is that true? I have 20 years of doubts about that.
But I am not the owner of the truth, nobody is. I do not know if by having a candidate who exercises the right leadership, he or she will lead a struggle that will effectively demonstrate, without a doubt and before the whole world, that the votes of a rigged election will be transformed into a victory over tyranny and that tyranny will finally flee the country. But as the popular saying goes, "wishes do not impregnate", so if anything can be guaranteed with that is to put a face to those who really want to change things, with the promise of achieving victory in that goal, if they demonstrate that they do it in an honest and consistent manner.
But apart from this reasoning, as I mentioned before, the change of a government is not the objective of a constituent process. The objective of this mechanism is to thoroughly review the pact between the governors and the governed, to discuss the institutional system of the country so that it can be governable again, establishing a system that gives opportunities and a better quality of life to Venezuelans, with all the necessary insurance so that a tragedy such as the one lived in Venezuela for more than 20 years does not happen again. In the words of the Catholic Church, Refound the Nation.
If the vision of anyone who aspires and manages to displace the regime headed by the criminal and convicted by a court, Nicolás Maduro Moros, is only to occupy his post to deploy a "government program", all the blood shed by young Venezuelans in the streets will have been lost, as well as the tortures suffered by the military who did comply with their oath and are dying in Maduro's dungeons. If the vision is that, his government will last very little, since from the point of view of governability with the rest of the sequestered powers, its viability would be impossible. The only hope for the continuity of his effort would be for him to convene the Constituent upon his accession to power.
On the other hand, the recovery of confidence to produce something in Venezuela, to aspire to become again what we once were, goes through the participation of the people summoned in a Constituent Assembly to rebuild with the participation of all what was destroyed, not to apply the government program of anyone who becomes President, or President, as they call it now.
Everybody is worried about getting out of the regime. I am too. But I am more worried that a promised and achieved change will be catastrophic, change in order to change nothing. In the take away you to put on me, and that a new nomenclature arrives that leaves the people outside, promising changes that cannot be given without an inflection in the current reality, and that only a constituent process can guarantee, where the new ruler agrees to put limits to the power that will be exercised by those who will govern after him in the future, within the framework of a new institutionality that we desperately need.
If it is a matter of going into an election with those principles in mind, it may be worth the effort to break the barriers of political participation in the face of tyranny. But if the opposite is the case, it will be more of the same, and even worse, with the same results...
Caracas, July 20, 2023
Blog:
TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario