An institutional solution

By Luis Manuel Aguana

Versión en español

The quotation from Juan Ignacio Jiménez's classic text, Política y Administración, [1] which stayed with me forever, was the differentiation between the institutional and the political: "...Government action is not an administrative function, but is intrinsically political, in the most vulgar sense of the art of the possible and in the most technical sense of authoritarian assignment of priorities, according to the ruler's understanding of the demands of the governed group. Institutions are administered and sectors are governed …”. The institutions know what needs to be done, and their duty is to accompany the politicians to determine when, where and in what proportion to apply the action of the State (or not to apply any action), which is the work of those who exercise the government. That is why politicians must respect the institutions because by definition they are the ones who are passing through, even if they hold power, while the institutions are the ones that stay and must prevail.

You may wonder why I brought up this classic. I do so because at this point we have to separate, although it is difficult for many people, the institutional from the political. ANCO has proposed to the politicians and the country an institutional solution, which if observed with the necessary rigor and technical control, can displace the regime of Nicolas Maduro Moros and his criminals, obtaining the political objective that we all seek to save Venezuela. But in order to achieve that objective, civil society MUST BE PRESENT IN THE WHOLE PROCESS as a "SINE QUA NON" condition (if not a condition) for everything to work as planned, obeying the interests of Venezuelans.

Without the ACTIVE participation of civil society, the solution proposed to politicians from the civil sphere will not work and will fail, because the interests that move in political circles have historically been put before the interests of the people. If the politicians decide to leave out civil society in the solution of the political problem of the Venezuelans, very possibly the effort we have made will be lost. This is not a premonition or self-fulfilling prophecy but an experience that we Venezuelans have paid for with blood for 20 years.

On the other hand, it is good to remind the fierce critics of the solution of the Popular Consultation for the Plebiscite and Binding, that this IS NOT A PROPOSAL BY JUAN GUAIDÓ BUT IS BORN FROM THE CIVIL SOCIETY, even though he and his Government in charge have given it their political endorsement. This is for those who insist on attacking the solution because it supposedly comes from him. It IS NOT THAT way, it comes from civil society. That's why the pyramid has to be reversed in the decision-making process. Only we Venezuelans will be able to overcome our own evils. No one will do it for us even if we say a thousand times that "alone we cannot".

The turn that has to be taken in this new stage of the route for the recovery of freedom in Venezuela does not pass through Guaidó, nor through María Corina, nor through Capriles (who lately is desperately trying to resurrect), but IS THE DECISION OF ALL VENEZOLANS. That is why the politician who understands that this is not his time but that of the citizens, and helps to make it so, will have found the key to his political future.

But as the popular saying goes, the devil does not rest. Once the Unitary Pact for Freedom and Free Elections was announced, where the path was set for the realization of a Popular Consultation Binding to Venezuelans, voices jumped up when they saw that it was no longer possible to stop that consultation, saying now, as in 2017, that the Consultation "is not binding".

To all these gentlemen I suggest that you read Articles 5, 62, 70 and 326 of the Constitution about the direct exercise of our sovereignty and the responsibility of civil society in the affairs of the State. What part of Article 5 that guarantees the direct exercise of sovereignty was not understood by those who say that participation, and even more so, the decision of a people, "is not binding"? Any participation established in the formulas mentioned in Article 70 IS BINDING.

And it has to be this way because of the close articulation between articles 5 and 70: Article 5: "Sovereignty resides in the people, who exercise it directly in the form foreseen in this constitution and in the law..."; and Article 70: "They are means of participation and protagonism of the people in the exercise of their sovereignty, in the political..., and in the social and economic... Article 5 defines who is the owner of the sovereignty and how he can exercise it in a DIRECT manner, and Article 70 which are the means established to exercise it in the political, social and economic spheres. How can anyone who simply reads that Constitution say that what the people decide when they issue a categorical mandate in a Popular Consultation is not binding? That mumbo-jumbo invented by politicians not to make effective the people's mandate on 16 July 2017 because "the consultation was not binding" was a deception made to Venezuelans because they had negotiated with the regime of Nicolas Maduro Moros.

Now they say that the Popular Consultation that was decided in the execution of the Unitary Pact for Freedom and Free Elections "is not binding" to dispatch with a spurious argument that the people will not speak out and decide what to do with this narco-criminal regime. Well, if it is binding and the Venezuelans must know it in order to fully exercise their right to express themselves in a Popular Consultation to decide the future of Venezuela.

This is perhaps the best time for Venezuelans to start exercising their citizenship. That is why we insist on intervening when the political has been overtaken by the crisis by applying an institutional solution of citizen protagonism. Our participation is well defined and written in a Constitution of which I am the first to insist that it is necessary to change, but I also dare say that many have not read it well. It is time for citizens to take the lead in decisions and to start taking the lead in this crisis…

Caracas, September 9, 2020

Blog: http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/

Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com

Twitter:@laguana

[1] Juan Ignacio Jiménez, Política y Administración, Cap 2. Modelo Tridimensional: Instituciones, Sectores y Sistemas, 1970.