The West Effect

By Luis Manuel Aguana

I'm a deep admirer of Morris West's work. Perhaps for the younger ones I refer you to the Wikipedia address so that you can get to know him, look for his work and read it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morris_West). For the older ones like me we enjoyed in our youth his extraordinary novels like "The shoes of the Fisherman", and his last and masterful "Eminence" where many say that before his death he predicted the coming of an Argentinean Pope. But West's novel that had the most impact on me was "The Clowns of God ", of which I made a political reference in 2012 for the elections of that year. (see in Spanish Los Bufones de Dios, en http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2012/02/los-bufones-de-dios.html), reference I will make in this note but for other reasons of equal importance.

“The Clowns of God", tells the vision of a Pope, about what would happen after the atomic destruction of the world by the powers. The Pope tries to communicate his vision to everyone through a Papal Encyclical but is forced to abdicate and is interned in a monastery with a vow of silence. Fundamentally, the Pope's account and his Encyclical did not try to argue that the powers were flying the world to pieces, that was taken for granted. The Pope's visions of West's novel deepened what humanity had to do, not to avoid the hecatomb, but to prepare to survive it. That's the brilliance of the approach. I will call that attitude The West Effect. That is, in the face of the inevitability of an evil process, you don't have to worry about avoiding it, but rather worry about preparing to survive it and beat its consequences.

After asking Juan Guaidó for his resignation -and also recommending what to do-, denouncing the mutual larcenies of the regime and its opposition, supporting the deaf ears of those who do not want the people to speak out, and through a Popular Plebiscite Consultation indicating the path we should follow, we have before us an unstoppable and inevitable process of negotiation and electoral cohabitation, probably with the approval of all the opposing factors of the country. Will that solve the problem of the Venezuelans? We don't think so. That's like trying to survive cancer and forget about it by taking aspirin. We must then prepare for what is to come.

The first thing that we will face will be the electoral current of some opposition parties that united with the narcoterrorist regime will name some Rectors of the CNE, if they reach a convenient agreement to the parts. But if they do not, the criminals of Miraflores will end up submitting the case to the National Assembly and will end up referring the case to the Supreme Court of Justice of the convict of Baralt Avenue. But what we will not be saved from in 2020 is an election with a CNE of the regime with some opposition parties, starting with Juan Guaidó participating; and be careful and if not also with the participation of many others who so far we do not imagine and who say they are radical opposition.

That will give an aura of legitimacy to the process and that is precisely what Maduro wants: to send the perception that the next National Assembly that begins in 2021 is legitimate, being quite the opposite when its sustenance base is as irritating as the regime's own Constituent National Assembly.

The big question is: will Venezuelans give legitimacy to these elections with our participation, even if it is unanimous opposition participation, with Maduro in power? To the question that Guaidó was asked in the interview with El País de España (see in Spanish  Crisis Política en Venezuela  https://elpais.com/internacional/2019/12/15/america/1576427053_816944.html) "Q. Do you study the possibility of one election without fulfilling the other two variables? (i.e. Cessation of usurpation and Transitional Government) A. We have to have free elections. Without a new CNE there is no free choice. The big dilemma is: is it possible to have the re-institutionalization and the guarantee of a presidential election with Maduro in Miraflores? That is an ongoing debate”. Guaidó is wrong to say that without a new CNE there are free elections. Please! The CNE does not condition that! What conditions free elections is the effective Cessation of the Usurpation that has not taken place. And if Guaidó and his people are still debating that, it is better that they resign as we have indeed requested. That question alone elucidates the problem of Venezuela.

Then, as it is already a fact that we will see ourselves facing elections with the regime in 2020, repeating in a worse version in 2019, we must forget ourselves as the civil society of these representatives to start working on something new. And you will say, what do you mean something new? And here I will speak to you as the Pope of the Encyclical of the West novel: organize ourselves as citizens for when the bombs begin to fall. The first approximation is Article 333 of the Constitution: "...every citizen invested or citizen invested or not invested with authority will have the duty to collaborate in the re-establishment of its effective validity" because the constitution ceased to be observed by an act of force, not only by the criminals who govern us but also for those who should have done so because they are "invested with authority". From here on, anything goes, starting by ignoring those elections and moving accordingly.

Each Community, each Municipality, each State, each Civil Society organization, each University, each Church of any faith, each union of workers and businessmen, each personality with influence, everyone, will have to pronounce themselves for a solution, if they do not agree with the political solution of living with Maduro and his delinquents, and those who call themselves politicians will have to fight for it. At the forefront of that struggle should be their natural and legitimate leaders, passing over those who have persistently deceived us. If that critical social mass does not express itself openly and forcefully, we will be defeated by those who have used politics to enrich themselves. We are not willing to remain calm and if we cannot stop what is coming we can begin to organize for what is to come.

In West's novel this was expressed, before the bombs began to fall, in the creation and multiplication throughout the world of communities with autonomy of life with sufficient capacity to provide for themselves the basic elements for their subsistence. Without yet reaching that extreme (which in one way or another in some parts of the country is being reached out of obligation) and before the dissolution of the state as we know it, the resounding rejection of a way of doing politics that all Venezuelans despise, will achieve the common agreement necessary for a new form of civil resistance that will lead us to a solution in which we all remember. We are already working on it before the West Effect begins...

Caracas, December 16, 2019

Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana

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