After many years of publicly addressing and exposing the need to convene a National Constituent Assembly to address the country's crisis, I believe it is important to comment on the statements made by the pre-candidate María Corina Machado (MCM) in an interview during the well-known Zulian program "A 8 columnas", hosted by journalist Rafael Galicia, on August 12, 2023 (see in Spanish, MCM: Eventualmente tendremos que llegar a una nueva Constitución con un gran consenso, en https://youtu.be/d61T8YyMCmg?t=2337). But let's first look at what MCM said:
"RG: MCM President Elect, you have an opposition Parliament, the opposition Public Powers, has the possibility of calling for a Constituent Assembly crossed your mind?
MCM: Look, I believe that eventually we will have
to reach a new text -constitutional, I mean- as a result of a great agreement,
of great consensus. I do not believe that there should be a discussion of a new
Constitution, a National Constituent Assembly, at a time when the country is
going through a crisis and social tensions such as these, because the idea is
not to impose one sector on another. Imposed Constitutions are very
short-lived.
RG: And how would you reform
the Constitution if not through a National Constituent Assembly?
MCM: No, I believe that this Constitution can serve for a transition process,
that we are going to live for a while, while we all go together to agree on a
Constitutional text where I do say that we have to reduce the
presidential character, where we have to ensure the principle of federalism,
where we have to make a Venezuela much less militaristic, where there is a
Venezuela open to property, to the market, and to work and which leaves behind
the statism that has been very present in our previous constitutional
texts" (emphasis added).
First, it must be clarified that the Constituent Assembly is a very sensitive issue for Venezuelans. Hugo Chávez Frías used it to win the 1998 presidential elections and then to destroy the existing institutionality of the 1961 Constitution, on the grounds of building a new country. But we all know what happened afterwards, and that is why talking about a Constituent Assembly in Venezuela is like talking about the noose in the house of the hanged man, no politician likes it.
However, given the circumstances, we must not only talk about this rope, because it is precisely from there that we must begin to dismantle this whole set up that Chávez set up for us, but also about the reasons for the hanged man to do what he did, as well as the serious implications of ignoring this fact, if we wish to rebuild this battered country plundered by criminals. Or as we say now, to Refound the Nation on new foundations.
MCM's statements can be understood as the fear that every politician in Venezuela feels of touching that topic, doing it from afar, distancing it in time -without grabbing the bull by the horns, as we Venezuelans would say- when it should be precisely the opposite. And not only touching it, debating it and confronting it publicly, but inserting it as the main axis of any future discourse and policy, when the current situation of the country cannot be explained without going through a fundamental fact that deviated the course of Venezuela's history. And that fact was none other than a Constituent Assembly in 1999 that denaturalized the institutional life of Venezuelans, whose main product was a Constitution tailored to the authoritarian desires of the President of the Republic, to remain in power and change our political model. So, we must start by talking about that, because if we do not change it, we will not change anything....
The first thing to clarify is that a call for a Constituent Assembly is a call to the owner of popular sovereignty, that is, to the Venezuelan people. No one is above that. It was there where Hugo Chavez settled to pass over the 1961 Constitution, which had its own rules to be altered.
It could be justifiably said that
the votes to elect constituent representatives are much more significant in
their purpose than the votes to elect as President any candidate to the
presidency of the Republic, elected for a short period in the time of a
country, because the decisions of the Constituent transcend beyond that time,
expressed in the decisions they make when they meet. The clearest example was
the Constituent of 1811, which decided to constitute Venezuela as a federal
Republic independent from Spain.
That said, if there is any
appropriate time to convene the Constituent to decide the destiny of
Venezuelans, it is precisely this one. In his book "The Constitution of
the French Republic", the magistrate Henri Donnedieu de Vabres wrote:
"A Constituent Assembly should be called when the current Constitution no
longer works or when the people want to change the political system". The
current Venezuelan Constitution not only does not work, but was specially
designed to perpetuate whoever exercises the Executive Power, to the detriment
of the rest of the powers of the State. And, on the other hand, who in
Venezuela does not wish to change the political system imposed by Hugo Chávez
Frías, the Socialism of the XXI Century? The
answer is obvious...
The idea according to which one
political group imposes itself on another in a Constituent process in Venezuela
comes out as a consequence of a Constituent convocation in 1999, without the
slightest respect for the proportional representation of minorities, with rules
of convocation, or Bases Comiciales, completely controlled by the one who
summoned the owner of sovereignty at that time.
Hugo Chávez Frías deceived the
Venezuelan people by requesting the approval of his rigged Bases Comiciales as
a blank check in his constituent consultation to the Venezuelan people. These
almost 24 years of generalized destruction have served as an experience for
Venezuelans to know how to summon the people to remake the Constitutional Pact
between the governors and the governed, balancing those of us who are currently
bearing the brunt. This cannot be an argument for not summoning the people in a
transparent manner so that they may decide the direction they wish to give to
the country, because they are not the owners of sovereignty, but their
representative in office.
The Constitutions that have been
imposed should do very little, although this one is already a quarter of a
century old. That is why we must hurry the construction of a new Pact in
accordance with the destruction that the country and its institutions have
suffered, entering once and for all into the Refoundation of the Nation, as
requested by the Catholic Church and supported by ANCO. This new Pact cannot
wait as MCM states. Any new President of the Republic has the responsibility to
call for a National Constituent Assembly, given the grave material and
institutional state of the country, with the due guarantees of participation of
all sectors, something that Hugo Chávez Frías did not do in 1999, and who had a
hidden hegemonic project to subjugate Venezuelans, which began precisely with a
Constituent Assembly call. That is the first thing to be done in the house of
the hanged man.
On the other hand, the immediate
summoning of the constituent power is the best guarantee of the political
stability of any new government, since it would guarantee the participation of
Venezuelans who still believe in the fantasy of the XXI Century Socialism, and
who are not part of the criminal regime that plagues Venezuela. Such an
Assembly could prevent the very possible undue hindrances of the rest of the
Public Powers controlled by the regime, to the performance of the Executive
Power during a difficult transition period, until the enactment of a new
Constitution, and by giving participation to the whole political spectrum, in
its fair proportion, it would tell the world that Venezuelans do give room to
different thinking, and that they can participate openly and peacefully in the
construction of a new Venezuela where we all fit in.
Phrases such as "I believe that eventually we are going to
have to reach a new text -constitutional I mean- product of a great agreement,
of great consensus".... and
"while we all go together to agree on a constitutional text",
generate confusion and entail a mistake that many politicians make -them or
their advisors- according to which "we agree" on a constitutional
text first to then call for a constituent election to endorse it. This is the
antithesis of the very reason of the Constituent process.
It is only the representatives of
the people elected by the people who can reach agreements within a National
Constituent Assembly and generate a text to be submitted to the consideration
of the people. It could be considered within the procedure, as in the Chilean
case of the second constituent call, an Expert Commission drafting the first
draft text derived from a political consensus, which proposes a constitutional
text to be submitted to the consideration of the people by the Constituent
Assembly (see Chilean Constituent Assembly, a question of procedure?, in https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/p/chilean-constituent-assembly-question.html).
But in Venezuela we are light years away from the political maturity of that
country to reach a consensus of that nature, so we must convene ourselves first
and that within that Assembly the Constituents produce their own procedure,
which is transparent in the eyes of the people.
It is very important that the
main pre-candidate of the opposition primaries agrees on the need to make
ANCO's dream of a federal and decentralized Venezuela come true, with the
necessary autonomy of all the States for its development. But this offer is not
compatible, nor can it be promised to Venezuelans with the current
Constitutional structure of 1999. According to constitutional lawyer Allan R.
Brewer-Carías, "According to Article
4 of the 1999 Constitution, the Republic of Venezuela is formally defined as a
"decentralized federal State" in the terms indicated in the same
Constitution, in accordance with the principles of territorial integrity,
solidarity, concurrence and co-responsibility. However, the terms defined in
the Constitution are centralizing, so that the country continues to be a
"Centralized Federation", which undoubtedly constitutes a contradiction"
(see in
Spanish, Allan
R. Brewer-Carías, Federación Centralizada en Venezuela: Una contradicción
constitucional, 2004, in https://allanbrewercarias.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/494.-460.-Federaci%C3%B3n-centralizada.-Guayaquil.pdf).
This contradiction translates, among other things, into a non-existent representation of the States in the Parliament, which can only be corrected with an open and frank discussion in a National Constituent Assembly, about the functions of a Senate, which are now unduly attributed to the President of the Republic in a constitutional manner since 1999. And it will continue to be so, if the next government after this monumental tragedy does not begin its constitutional term straightening out this situation, among many others essential for the change in Venezuela's development paradigm. This is dealt with in greater detail in ANCO's proposal, El Gran Cambio (The Great Change). (see in Spanish, El Gran Cambio, una Propuesta para la Refundación de Venezuela, en https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/p/documentos-fundamentales.html).
Hopefully, this note will be understood as a contribution to the clarification of an issue that is by no means trivial and that requires many years, as ANCO has been studying specifically the Constituent Assembly issue and the imperative need for the immediate summoning of the people by the political class so that they may decide for themselves their destiny in the midst of the greatest destruction that Venezuela has had since its Independence, without underestimating that the current political circumstances indicate that Venezuelans are heading towards an electoral confrontation with a criminal regime. We hope that among all of us we can discuss together and without impediments the issues surrounding the hangman's house that Venezuela has become, for the sake of the future welfare of the new generations.
Caracas, August 15, 2023
Blog:
TIC’s & Derechos Humanos, https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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