Intervention in the Forum "The Popular Consultation" organized by the Popular Center of Citizen Education in the framework of the program "A Coffee for Venezuela
Of the useful virtues, I need, and much, the hypocrisy
Andres Eloy Blanco
"Poda", January 1934
I must first thank the Popular Center for Citizen Education for this opportunity to debate something that is deeply linked to the citizenry, which is nothing other than its participation in the issues that concern it directly, through the mechanisms that the Constitution establishes to decide the future of the country. And what else can be debated in today's Venezuela other than the ways to put an end to this tragedy that has overwhelmed us for more than 20 years?
The Poet of the People, Andrés Eloy Blanco, wrote in the presentation of the compendium of his poems from 1923 to 1928, entitled "Poda" (1), a phrase that certainly left me surprised: "Of the useful virtues, I need, and much, the hypocrisy". The context of the phrase was equally surprising. The poet indicated that he was "Poda" himself like a tree in order to grow, leaving behind his adolescence as a "literary epigone" as he called himself. Immortal poems of the Venezuelan people were written at that time: The Lemon Tree of the Lord, The Grapes of Time, The Renunciation, Coplas of Traveling Love, which are an important part of our cultural heritage, saw the light before the Poet of the People evolved into the extraordinary political being that everyone knew afterwards.
And Andres Eloy Blanco said there for the story that he lacked hypocrisy and then demonstrated more than enough that one can be an extraordinary politician without that condition. "Hypocrisy: 1. f. Faking qualities or feelings contrary to those that one truly has or experiences" (DRAE, https://dle.rae.es/?formList=form&w=hipocres%C3%ADa#).
The traditional Venezuelan politician has a lot of that "useful virtue", as the poet called it. Why do I bring up this story? Because those who bear the greatest responsibility in times of crisis feign qualities they do not have in order to deceive those who have to face them, hiding the truths that have to be told to the people. Venezuela has to rescue in some way the exercise of truth in those who have to solve the problems and point out the paths, and even more so in the darkest times like the ones we live in today.
Much has been speculated about the Popular Consultation and many things have been said that do not correspond to what the group to which I am honored to belong, the Original National Constituent Alliance, ANCO, proposed in its correct sense. To simplify, I am going to raise four major issues associated with the Popular Consultation that have aroused many concerns among Venezuelans, speaking as clearly as possible to the audience of this Café por Venezuela:
First big issue: The Popular Consultation belongs to the Civil Society
Many questions have come to us indicating why if the Popular Consultation is of the Civil Society, the political parties are using it to promote themselves throughout the country. This has caused confrontations and discontent that have translated into discomfort among the population, which does not affect the parties - which is the majority - who say that if the parties are involved in this Consultation they will not participate or help it to take place. From our approach to the President in Charge, one of the first points that was discussed with him and his close group was that a Popular Consultation proposed by the MUD/FA would go straight to failure.
This was clearly understood by the President and his team. That is why the Organizing Committee sworn in by the National Assembly is composed exclusively of personalities from Civil Society, such as the distinguished people who are with me today, in a clear demonstration of recognition to those of us who proposed this path to Venezuelans. However, it seems that this recognition has gone so far. As soon as the organization of the event was announced, the party machines were mobilized all over the country, passing over the whole world, and ignoring the citizen's role in something that can only be successful if the citizenry is the protagonist. The parties continue to think that without them it is impossible to get out of the regime when it is precisely the opposite: with them intervening the citizens will not get out of this tragedy. They have to put themselves aside so that the People can express themselves and order the Cessation of the Usurpation of Nicolas Maduro Moros. The "interception" of the Popular Sovereignty, as Dr. Blanca Rosa Mármol de León has called and repeated many times, to that execrable conduct of the political parties is the main reason why the citizens have to be present in the solution of this problem through this instrument.
How was the impasse resolved? Each person played a different role in the Popular Consultation, in a sort of togetherness but not in a scramble. And since the parties decided on the location and number of the manual consultation centers, using all the resources they had for that, without sharing them with anyone, let them take care of those centers. The citizens will then take care of mobilizing the majority population using the days of electronic voting so that no Venezuelan who cannot move to the 7000 manual voting centers for any reason, or who does not have the necessary technology to introduce their vote, will not be left without voting, using the assistance of Civil Society promoters in the vicinity of their homes. THAT IS THE MAJORITY OF THE COUNTRY. 7000 manual centers will not be enough to cover all of Venezuela. For reasons that they only know the parties have gathered the electoral centers instead of doing the opposite as we proposed. The Popular Consultation will then be moved to the homes of the people or their surroundings throughout the country by the hand of the citizens.
In the international case, unfortunately there will be no other way to participate other than electronically, but we strongly suggest that organized Venezuelan civil society groups in those countries do the same as we do for those cases where there are Venezuelans who have no way to access an electronic point. I am sure that there will be many such cases in the Latin American countries and cities where most Venezuelans have migrated on foot, such as the cases of Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, or Peru, and emblematic cases such as that of Cúcuta where there are no less than one million Venezuelans in extremely precarious conditions.
Second big topic: The questions of the Popular Consultation
This seems to be a taboo subject. Everybody asks and nobody answers. I am wrong, if the President in charge Juan Guaidó and the First Vice President of the National Assembly, Juan Pablo Guanipa, answered, they have repeated ad nauseam that they will be the questions with clear electoral meaning that were formulated in the National Assembly Agreement of October 1, 2020. WE IN ANCOUNTER OPPOSE THAT STRONGLY and send a communication to the Organizing Committee of the Popular Consultation on October 24, 2020, that I sign on behalf of the Alliance. The High Citizens' Council sworn in by the Organizing Committee of the Popular Consultation also opposed this, indicating that the questions formulated by the National Assembly in the words of Dr. Oswaldo Álvarez Paz's speech had to be changed.
The questions that the National Assembly established should be reviewed because they are badly asked. They do not comply with the itinerary established in the Statute for Democratic Transition of February 2019: Cessation of Usurpation, Transitional Government and Free Elections, IN THAT ORDER. We are not going to compromise on that. At this moment they are being revised, and the political parties would be wrong to insist that the questions will be those initially proposed by the National Assembly that go in the opposite direction of the sentiment of the great majority of Venezuelans. THE MATURE AND THE REGIME MUST LEAVE POWER BEFORE ANY OTHER ELECTION IS HELD IN THE COUNTRY.
And something very important: the success of this consultation to Venezuelans DOES depend on the questions asked. There is absolutely no point in consulting Venezuelans if they want elections with the regime in power. It would be a mockery of the dead and the prisoners of this murderous regime. We would not participate in a farce like that, and not just ANCO, but no decent Venezuelan. That is and will continue to be the proposed motive of this Popular Consultation proposed in the terms of civil society. Very soon the country will know the final text of the questions that the National Assembly will decide after our request for reconsideration. That will be the defining moment of this Popular Consultation.
Third major topic: The Electronic Consultation
It is no secret to anyone what my public position has been regarding electronic voting in Venezuela. I have been writing about it for years. I was a technical witness of the Sentence of the Supreme Court of Justice in exile that decided the nullity of the electronic electoral system in Venezuela. With the complete information provided to the President in charge, derived from our meeting of September 4, was a document in which we described, in general terms, how we at ANCO had thought about the technical implementation of the Popular Consultation. We studied this aspect in depth. There we explicitly stated the following: "NO ELECTRONIC VOTING ON THE INTERNET. ANCO fully endorses the Ruling of the Electoral Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of June 13, 2018 which declares "NULL AND INAPPLICABLE as of this date the use of the AUTOMATED VOTING AND SCRUTINY SYSTEM for the election of positions of popular representation of the public powers, as well as for the holding of referendums, in the terms set forth in Article 295.5 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. Hence, our proposal is strictly adhered to that decision".
A "Referendum" is not a Popular Consultation, which is well established in Article 70. However, the principle I have always held is that without a Manual Scrutiny with witnesses, public and ballots, where people see the final count with their own senses, the digital result of a decision issued from an electronic device can be susceptible to manipulation by anyone with nefarious intentions, as the current elections in the United States have indeed shown. That is why I have written and pointed out that the entire Venezuelan electoral system is corrupt to the core and cannot be used for a new election of any kind in Venezuela, until a profound revision is made to produce a technical, procedural, organizational and legal change. AND THIS CANNOT BE DONE with the regime in power. The opposite would be suicide.
In spite of the material delivered, the team of the Government in charge began the technical implementation in a completely opposite sense, that is, the design of the Popular Consultation using electronic means, arguing the material difficulties of the face-to-face participation in Venezuela and the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic. While this is true, the issue was one of organization. We proposed multiplying the number of centers run by Civil Society so that people could walk as close as possible to their homes and carry out the manual voting act in a few seconds, which gave us an additional advantage of making it impossible for violent groups to act against a small number of centers. However, this meant that the parties lost control of the voting centers and all the associated logistics that they are used to handling.
Paradoxically, doing the Popular Consultation with cell phones and web pages gave us the solution of massive participation of those who were left out by the imposition of party lines. We have created groups of citizens all over the country ready to mobilize, as I indicated before in the first big issue. To deal with the problem of the "virtuality" of the people's participation, our volunteers will certify the participation of the virtual votes they collect, verifying that the participants are real people with identity cards, who are effectively expressing their opinion through the digital media. We will convert as many virtual votes as possible into face-to-face votes throughout the country. While it is true that this procedure is by no means sufficient to resolve the requested virtual vote, at least it will give us important proof of people's participation in this effort by all.
Fourth big issue: ANCO's decision to join efforts with a Presidential Commission that is not accredited by public opinion.
This is one of the hottest topics that must be addressed without any kind of evasion. ANCO responsibly decided to propose this solution to the only legitimate institution of the people, recognized nationally and internationally. We could not have done so but objectively all the international political factors that we consulted outside the country always referred to the Legitimate Government of Juan Guaidó. The Popular Consultation as a proposal was only viable if the Government in charge assumed it as its own EVEN though it was a civil society initiative. But it was necessary for the citizens to represent and lead it. This was only half achieved. The political parties did what they are used to doing and which we citizens have allowed them to do. That is the truth. As long as that does not change and they do not subrogate themselves to the mandate that the people give them, there will be no significant change in the condition of Venezuelans. This first approach of working together - together but not together - is a success for the citizens, but there is still a long way to go before this changes.
The discredit of the Encargado Government for its poor performance during almost two years at the head of the opposition has affected the conviction and citizen participation for this monumental effort that we have to make. The brutal division of the opposition that considers that Guaidó is already a burden that must be replaced has put barriers to what can be done with the proposed Consultation. That is the cost of doing this process with the political sector. And indeed, it seems that we are throwing ourselves into the water to save someone who is drowning and who is hanging on to the neck of civil society to avoid sinking and dying. What we can do there, like any lifeguard, is give him a slap on the wrist and knock him out so that we can take him to shore and save us both. We cannot let that dead weight take us to the bottom because we are talking about Venezuela. We have to do what we have to do for the best interest of Venezuelans.
We are not in the plan to save Guaidó's neck or his administrative continuity because it is not our place, but to save Venezuela. The citizens invested or not with authority are in the duty of doing that as the Constitution says; and we are doing it with a proposal for which we are still fighting with the political sector so that it does not get distorted and I believe that the most important living forces of the country are with us. We will make the greatest effort not to drown in the attempt. After we are all safe on the shore, we citizens will have to take care of finding those who demonstrated to have the necessary conditions to get us out of the deep hole where they put us as a Republic, in a new stage of the life of the country. And one of the conditions to find those citizens is to specify who speaks to us with the truth and without hypocrisy, virtues once possessed by a great Venezuelan poet and extraordinary politician in 1934 .
Thank you very much,
Caracas, November 16, 2020
Blog: http://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
(*) Luis Manuel Aguana es Doctor en Estudios del Desarrollo, MSc en Economía Internacional y Licenciado en Computación, de la Universidad Central de Venezuela
(1) Andrés Eloy Blanco, PODA Saldo de Poemas 1923-1928, Quinta Edición, Ed. Yocoima Venezuela-México, 1956
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