The Secretary General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, explained in a recent article, in much more detail, his proposal of cohabitation with counterweights for Venezuela (see in Spanish Venezuela or the continuation of nothingness, in https://reportecatolicolaico.com/2022/09/01/luis-almagro-venezuela-o-la-continuacion-de-la-nada/).
The entire explanation of the Secretary General of the OAS can be summarized in the following paragraph: "Yes, I have never known a country in which so many people want to be president of the country. That is why it is more than necessary to have a collegiate system of government like the Swiss, like the Uruguayan Constitution of 1952". According to his approach, as in Venezuela politics has been summarized in an "all or nothing", by the regime and its opposition, we must find a way to achieve intermediate spaces that allow the political game to flow in favor of the weakest. This is what Almagro calls "cohabitation, co-government and counterweights" stating that "The "all or nothing" in which Venezuelan politics works today is based on the absence of these counterweights. In a country without counterweights at the political, social and economic levels, whoever wins the executive branch of the State keeps everything". And this is indeed what is happening in Venezuela.
But, is such an approach possible in Venezuela? When he mentioned the Swiss system, I could not help but remember the famous phrase "we are not Swiss" of that famous Adeco trade unionist, Manuel Peñalver, who made history in his time in Venezuela and that I imagine that Dr. Almagro would hardly take into consideration, because it synthesizes our political culture. Peñalver is part of the retarded history of the Venezuela that always refused to yield spaces and even less to political changes that would imply ceding power: "He was remembered for a phrase that generated headlines in his time: "We are not Swiss", with which (his party Acción Democrática) denied the support of the majority bench to the tax reform proposals that the Commission for the Reform of the State (Copre) had presented among a broad package of measures that pursued administrative modernization" (see in Spanish Manuel Peñalver Library, in http://cronicasangostureas.blogspot.com/2014/04/biblioteca-manuel-penalver.html).
There is an unwritten political maxim in Venezuela: Power, like women, is not shared. So, with all the macho charge that expression may have. Either you have it or you don't. There are no shades of gray or in-between. Hence the "all or nothing" that Luis Almagro's exhibition attributes to us. It is a deeply cultural trait. In a forum with ANCO leaders from the State of Anzoátegui, in the early days of the unconstitutional convocation of the constituent in May 2017 I referred to it, specifically for the case of the States of the country, in a direct manner: "... No ruler, and especially El Libertador, in the entire republican history of Venezuela ceded control to the States, not even after the Federal War, where the Federation triumphed, and from which, with the Constitution of 1864, we called ourselves the United States of Venezuela. Later, with the oil wealth, even less political and economic power has been ceded or shared with the States. Budgets, policies, infrastructure, health, education, security, environment, etc., everything that has to do with the quality of life of citizens in each municipality, in each region of Venezuela, is decided by those who come to power in Caracas. That is why nobody wants to give that up. Whoever puts his hands on the ballot decides for all of us...". (see in Spanish Original Constituent Assembly versus Constitutional Fraud, in http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/2017/05/constituyente-originaria-versus-fraude.html)
I would love for us to be like the Swiss, but unfortunately we are not yet, as Peñalver referred to in his famous phrase. We do not have that idiosyncrasy that would allow us to accept a proposal of collegiate government, and hence the outright rejection of the interpretation of cohabitation or co-government with counterweights initially put forward by Almagro. Perhaps if the Secretary General of the OAS were to read the editorial of the Venezuelan evening newspaper Tal Cual of June 9, 2016, entitled with the same expression "We are not Swiss", masterfully written by Laureano Márquez, he could understand the meaning of that phrase in our country (see in Spanish We are not Swiss, by Laureano Márquez, in http://laureanomarquez.com/escritos/editorial-tal-cual/no-somos-suizos/).
Then Venezuela's solution cannot come from Switzerland or Uruguay, but from our own historical experience, or as our Constitution says in Article 350, that is, from our "republican tradition, its struggle for independence, peace and freedom".
Venezuelans have been confronted on many occasions in our history to change governments and things were always resolved, in some cases with the violence of civil war, and in others by the intervention of the Armed Forces. An interesting case occurred at the beginning of the last century, when Cipriano Castro and Juan Vicente Gómez took power by means of armed insurrection. In no case did the opposing sides decide to "share" power.
In the present century of dialogues and peaceful solutions between peoples, ANCO has proposed that if one side or the other wants to play the zero-sum game of "all or nothing" proposed by Almagro, it should be the people who decide. Is it very difficult to understand this? Then the problem does not boil down to the solution, but how to implement it in these circumstances in spite of the opposing sides, and that both sides accept the opinion that the sovereign people of Venezuela indicate, not only because of the principle of Self-Determination of the Peoples -which by the way is also established in our Constitution- but because the two sides do not have the power nor the representation to decide our destiny for us, when we can constitutionally exercise our sovereignty in a direct manner. And that way is written in the last 4 articles of our Constitution, with the summoning of the Sovereign People of Venezuela to a National Constituent Assembly of Original character. The work then is to think how we do it among all of us, including the OAS. And the best of all is that you don't have to be Swiss to understand it or to do it...
Caracas, September 3, 2022
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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