By Luis Manuel Aguana
In the old days, where there were no points
of sale or debit cards, with or without a chip, people had to pay by check. The
check was a payment institution that, although it did not just die, was already
forgotten in the face of new electronic payment mechanisms and the current
invisibility of money. At that time there was an expression that translated
maximum trust between two parties: giving a "blank check". This meant
taking a check from your checkbook, signing it and handing it over without specifying
an amount on the check for the recipient to fill out. No one gave "blank
checks" because your account was left to the discretion of whoever
received the check. And that maximum trust was only seen between husband and
wife, or business partners with a lot of confidence in each other. The
expression remained in the popular jargon as a sign of extreme trust.
As of January 23, 2019, Venezuelans gave Juan
Guaido a "blank check" to do on our behalf what he considered
necessary to fulfill the 3-step mantra he promised in his oath before the
people. The Venezuelans in their desperation to get out of "this"
trusted that the President in charge would do with that account of our property
what he wanted. The evaluation after a year and a half of management has left
much to be desired, to the point that the President in Charge has been losing
one by one the fundamental support without being able to successfully complete
his mission of fulfilling the mantra. His greatest political detractors are
those who supported him at the beginning of his term of office, and it could
finally be said, without failing to be true, that he has very little support
left from those who were responsible for the collegiate government that the
National Assembly invented in February 2019.
What's left for the President and his party?
The people. The disappointed people who initially gave him their massive
support, and who, as they have seen that this cheque has been cashed and that
very little of it has reached the population, have also shown their rejection
of anything now proposed by the Government in Charge. This is the situation in
which the country finds the new "road
map to confront fraud and save Venezuela" as Juan Guaidó himself
stated in his video message via Twitter yesterday (see in Spanish https://mobile.twitter.com/jguaido/status/1296223948955320321). The people are what the President-in-Charge has left, hence point No.
3 of his proposal: "To call on the country to express its true will through a
national and international mechanism of massive citizen participation".
If by convening the country we mean a plebiscitary
popular consultation, that has been the proposal that ANCO as part of civil
society has exposed to Venezuelans as the only solution to confront these
criminals. Let the people decide! That is our slogan. The fact that the
Legitimate Government has accepted the proposal as a mechanism is a first
fundamental step to get out of the problem, but it is not the only one. If the
Government in Charge is going to take the route of requesting popular support
to oxygenate a year and a half of political laziness, there is a cost that they
have to assume: the check cannot be
blank anymore.
And I'm going to expose them in the crudest
way. When a lifeguard swims to the rescue of someone who is drowning, the
person in desperation tries to hold on to the lifeguard's neck so as not to
drown. If the lifeguard allows that, they both end up drowning. It is for this
reason that the lifeguard strikes the drowned person, leaving him
semi-conscious, so that he can be carried safely to shore. Those who are
drowning cannot have control of the rescue. This is the same case. Civil
society, as a proponent of a solution, has thrown itself into the sea to save
one who is drowning because of his mistakes but who in his clumsiness is taking
all Venezuelans to the bottom. And that we cannot allow.
That is why we, as owners of the checkbook of
the Popular Sovereignty, cannot issue another "blank check" to Juan
Guaidó and we demand that together with the Government in Charge, we agree on
the terms of that rescue and how it will be carried out. Otherwise, it will be
another failure by the same people who said that humanitarian aid would come
"if" or "if". The "Government in Charge" must not
only accept that it is the people who decide what to do with the country and
the Maduro regime, but also on what terms, and that a qualified representation
of that sovereign people should control the funds of the cheque that would now
be given to them, accompanying their execution all along the way.
The proposal made by Juan Guaidó to the
country must have the quality seal of that civil society, both in the proposal
of questions to be asked to the Venezuelan people, as well as in the mechanisms
to be used to consult the sovereign. The press is already being told that the
intention of the Government in Charge is to hold a popular consultation, but
this is rejected by the majority of the parties in the coalition that brought
Guaidó to the Presidency in Charge. (see in Spanish Mayoría del
G4 rechaza “consulta popular” como alternativa a las parlamentarias https://eldiario.com/2020/08/14/g4-consulta-popular-parlamentarias/).
If this is the case, since officially the
Government in Charge has only said of its intention to "call on the country to express its true will through a national
and international mechanism of massive citizen participation" which
may or may not translate into a Popular Consultation, the details of that
proposal have yet to be known. For example, Eugenio Martinez, a well-known
electoral spokesman for the official opposition, said in that note from
journalist Raul Castillo in the newspaper that "Although there is no concrete information regarding what the
technical process to carry out the consultation would be like, it is expected
that it will be in digital form”.
ANCO's technical proposal in NO WAY
CONTEMPLATES A DIGITAL CONSULTATION but manually and completely adjusted to the
sentence of 13 June 2018 of the TSJ Legitimo in its Electoral Chamber. So, news
are already coming out that disqualify the proposal before it is presented, due
to factors that do not want the people under any circumstances to express
themselves in relation to what is happening in the country, or that possibly
want Guaidó to fail in a last delayed attempt to do something to save
Venezuela. ANCO already has a technical-electoral proposal that it can make
available to the Responsible Government for discussion whenever they wish.
I'm not one of those who particularly wants
to save Juan Guaidó's neck, but I think we Venezuelans can't afford to let him
drown with all of us in the boat. It's a stupid suicide, as well as the
pettiness of losing Venezuela because "we don't want" for whatever
political reason that Guaido and his party succeed with a well-structured
proposal. But neither can we accept that the Government in Charge does what the
drowned do when they are lost, like hanging around the neck of the lifeguard,
letting them do whatever they want. That is what happened on 16J-2017 and it is
what some sectors of the radical opposition do not understand. The parties did
what they wanted to do, including making a pact with the regime for regional
elections in exchange for not complying with the result of that consultation.
In this new consultation, the people can
extend the period of Juan Guaidó's National Assembly (which, among other
things, is what they want and that is why they are seriously considering the
mechanism) but for a perfectly defined and short time, without "blank
checks" and with concrete tasks for that Assembly, such as the appointment
of a Transition Government. Civil society must also demand to be within that
Transitional Government with clearly identified representatives. These
questions would come from the four (4) minimum issues that ANCO proposed in its
proposal to the Government in Charge and published for all Venezuelans on
August 10, 2020 (see in Spanish Propuesta al Gobierno Encargado: “Que el Pueblo
Decida”, in https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/2020/08/comunicado-anco-propuesta-al-gobierno.html).
Like the rest of the Venezuelan people, I no
longer trust those in the official opposition who have kept us in an
unsustainable situation for a year and a half, but I am willing to move forward
if the control mechanisms exist that will make this proposal a success. That
would not be a triumph for Guaido or his party but for all of us if we are
there to control it. We have opened this proposal to all Venezuelans. Already
the Government in Charge seems to have taken it up. But it will only be so if
it is carried out under the terms of the lifeline. Otherwise if they think we
are giving them a "blank check" again, we will all go to the bottom
irretrievably...
Caracas, August 20, 2020
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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