For some time now, a sort of "anti-Constituent" phobia has arisen in Latin America, as a consequence of the call to the peoples for the revision of their fundamental Pacts. These calls have been perniciously used by the international left as a mechanism to impose a socialist ideological change that they could not impose by other means, including armed insurrection. This fashion, if we can call it that, of summoning the owner of sovereignty for such purposes, has caused an additional fear to those already known, against summoning the Constituent Assembly, in order to address an in-depth discussion on the development of the countries, which in many cases, including Venezuela, is very necessary.
Each country will have to evaluate, according to its reality, whether a Constituent Assembly is necessary or not, which in my opinion should only be applied when the changes are of such a magnitude that they imply the necessary convocation of all the legitimate representatives of a country.
However, from a strictly theoretical and Constitutional point of view, it is important to review the opinion of constitutionalists on how such a process is arrived at. From a conference held in April 2021 on the Chilean constituent process, Dr. Roberto Viciano Pastor, Director of the Doctorate in Constitutional Law at the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés, La Paz, Bolivia, and General Coordinator of the Latin American Observatory on the Constituent Process in Chile, explains the following:
"Constituent processes have arisen in Latin America, as in other parts of the world, when an important social crisis appears. If there is no important social crisis, no State, no country enters a delicate zone, a zone in which it is unstable, by definition, as it is to redefine the rules for the functioning of the State, the economy, society, etc., etc.... Therefore, this is the last "ratio regis", the last option left to try to solve the country's problems. First they try to solve them in many other ways. But when there is no other formula, in the end the countries are forced to activate constituent processes" (see in Spanish Constituent Processes in Latin America from the comparative perspective, in https://www.elmostrador.cl/tv/2021/04/16/en-vivo-procesos-constituyentes-en-america-latina-desde-la-perspectiva-comparatista/, min 15:55) (emphasis added).
Was there a social crisis in Chile, a country with the best indicators of economic well-being and quality of life in Latin America, that deserved to convene the Constituent Assembly? Or was it rather an artificial and ideologically induced crisis?
According to Dr. Roberto Viciano Pastor in his lecture, no country enters a delicate and unstable zone if there is no major social crisis. How could there be a "major crisis" in a country that headed and still heads the Latin American Human Development Index (HDI) results for 2021? Contrary to Chile, Venezuela's HDI goes into a free-fall pit from 1990 to 2021, the last year of the sample (see Human Development Index-HDI in Latin America - 1990-2021, in https://youtu.be/cZDVSC4YYVE).
“The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education (mean years of schooling completed and expected years of schooling upon entering the education system), and per capita income indicators, which is used to rank countries into four tiers of human development. A country scores a higher level of HDI when the lifespan is higher, the education level is higher, and the gross national income GNI (PPP) per capita is higher” (see Human Development Index, in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index).
Of the 20 Latin American countries measured from 1990 to 2021, Chile is ranked No. 1 (never falling below second place) by June 2021 (0.848 points), with Venezuela ranked No. 18 and falling (0.659 points), two places ahead of Haiti, which ranks last. Judging these 30 years of measuring this development indicator, if any country urgently needs to revise its institutions and political system through a Constituent Assembly process, it is Venezuela, not Chile. And yet, Chileans rejected the legal absurdity proposed to enter the socialist orbit.
However, people also make mistakes. The Chilean people made a mistake when they approved to go to a constituent assembly without necessity, because of a mirage created by the violence induced by the radicals of the left, being a country in full development. Unfortunately, the political leadership was not up to the task, as the Chilean people themselves were when they rejected the retrograde swill presented for their approval on September 4, 2022.
The Venezuelan people were also mistaken when they were dazzled by the 1992 coup, buying as gold what was made of brass. At the beginning of the 1990s, Venezuela was going through an important change in its economic growth that in no way justified the proposal for Constitutional change presented later by the coup leader: "... in 1990 growth was 6.47% and in 1991 it was a spectacular 9.73%. It was a take-off. Inflation also began to be controlled, falling to 40.6% in 1990 and 34.20% in 1991. The treasury began to run a surplus in 1990 and the volume of investments, to put it in very broad terms, doubled." (see in Spanish Prodavinci, CAP, the man who invented himself (IV), in https://prodavinci.com/cap-el-hombre-que-se-invento-a-si-mismo-iv-y-ultima-parte/). However, the people turned their backs on the political class by approving the call for a Constituent Assembly that produced a new Constitution that subsequently aggravated the distortions, to the point that we are still not out of the problem.
In both cases, the people decided their destiny. Chile, preventing a suicidal change in 2022, and Venezuela, naively falling into the deceit of a "arañero" from Sabaneta de Barinas in 1999. But we can still reverse that situation, as serious as it may seem, carefully using the same constitutional tool, but taking into account some important factors. Let's see.
The fact that an ideologically defined majority takes control of a constituent process is a contradiction in itself to the Constituent concept, called to define among all those who make up a Nation, a new Pact between governed and governors. Hence, a Pact established under these conditions cannot be sustained because a majority rises above a minority, making this agreement unsustainable in the long term.
And this does not mean that there should not be factors that drive any ideology within a process of this nature, but that the representation of all of them should be proportionally guaranteed, making that the decisions that the Constituent Assembly will ultimately take, necessarily pass through the approval of a qualified majority. And this must be defined when establishing the rules of the game for the participation and election of the Constituent. In Venezuela these rules are called Bases Comiciales, or rules for the convocation and political participation of the factors. The Bases Comiciales suggested by ANCO, not only summon the political parties, but fundamentally the Civil Society in all sectors.
But additionally, at this point, Dr. Roberto Viciano Pastor, in the above mentioned conference, introduces an important suggestion to avoid the imposition of ideological majorities: "Therefore, I believe that all this should make us constitutionalists reflect on the need to place constitutional brakes on excessive political majorities. That is to say, I think we should consider that although a party may have 2/3 in an Assembly, I do not think it is good for it to have 2/3 in the Assembly. It can govern perfectly and broadly with 40% of the seats, placing a kind of ceiling on it, because when we allow a strong accumulation of popular vote in a political option at a given historical moment, we are practically leading to a situation of non-existence of controls over political power. We have to analyze and learn from what has happened" (min 1:03:00).
In other words, the Bases Comiciales should introduce a limitation to the first majority of the Constituent, to a maximum limit of 40%, leaving the approval decisions to the 2/3 (qualified majority) of the proportionally elected assembly members. Perhaps if this suggestion had been taken into account for the Chilean Constituent Assembly, the project presented to the people of Chile would have presented a higher quality of content, first of all because it would not have been possible to impose in its text the majority ideologies, especially those of gender.
I believe that the Venezuelan people have become more and more educated and informed in relation to the Constituent proposal, but there is still a long way to go. It is a matter of successive approximations. The Chilean people rejected a draft constitutional text contrary to their interests, that is the most important thing. An educated and informed people can never be deceived in spite of the increasing ideological aggressiveness of those who are capable of setting a country on fire in order to get their hands on power. Those are the ones who will never pass...
Caracas, September 15, 2022
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
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