Intervention at the Forum "La Ruta Constituyente para el Cambio",
organized by Caracas Ciudad Plural
December 16, 2021
Good afternoon,
My thanks to the friends of Caracas Ciudad Plural, for their kind invitation to talk about a topic that I consider transcendental for Venezuela, especially after many years of crisis in today's Venezuela.
Since many years ago when I started to have a presence in the networks about a new Country Project for Venezuela through the Constituent Assembly, most of the time I did not consider it as a mechanism to "get out of the regime" but to avoid that any other messiah could get his hands on power in Venezuela. The probability of someone getting sick is very low if he/she has a healthy body with very high defenses. The social, political and economic body of the country had very low defenses when the militarist illness of Hugo Chávez Frías fell on the country, precisely by using the expedient of constitutional change through a constituent process. Now people think that we are talking about a Constituent to get out of the regime when the truth is that we are doing it to change the political structure and power relations in Venezuela. The exit from the regime, as we shall see below, is nothing more than a consequence of that purifying process.
Nobody in Venezuela knew what a Constituent Assembly was, not even Chávez himself, who could never explain in his campaign what it was beyond saying that it would mean a deep change in the country. Only in the development and implementation of the authoritarian model did they realize how deep and transforming it could be, and effectively they changed the country but to make it worse, and subsequently abandoning the Constitution itself to set up a constitutional authoritarian regime. Nobody thought that this change would be to destroy Venezuela. However, as the fish dies by the mouth, they were forced by their populist discourse to include -and it is worth saying here that there was no need for that- the articles in the new Constitution according to which the people and the Constitutional Powers could call for a Constituent Assembly at any time in the life of the Nation.
But going back to the above, the notes I published in all these years mostly referred to explain the reasons why we had to change the system, as well as the current political-territorial distribution, and beyond, the power structure in Venezuela, through a profound change that we explained in detail in our ANCO Project entitled The Great Change. These short minutes that I have for this presentation prevent me from explaining in detail those changes, which established in the manner described in our project, will definitely prevent not only another Chávez from coming to power, but will lay the foundations for a sustained and sustainable development of Venezuela for the new generations, precisely because our fundamental proposal is that power is not constitutionally in the hands of the rulers, but in the hands of the citizens. I invite you all to read it on our web site and learn about the depth of our approach to the country.
I will dedicate these short minutes here, not to explain what we have already explained publicly about the project, which is already complex in itself, but to delve into how we could achieve its materialization, examining the national and international political context in which we find ourselves.
When I started writing about this exciting topic, I naively thought that the project of change was enough to convince political decision-makers to go down this path. What politician, I thought, would refuse the ideal country that we could become if we changed the way of doing things and established a path so that the citizens themselves would be the architects of their own existence, making a better quality of life a reality for all?
Very soon I discovered that those who were the worst enemies of change were those who had enjoyed power up to this moment, and those who were eagerly seeking it through the easy way, being in government or in their political opposition. At those levels, there is no talk of citizen welfare other than to seek votes and talk about change so that nothing changes. The constitutional structure of the country is designed since the last century for those who hold power and have control of what belongs to all, not to the citizens. The system is designed so that political parties kill each other to get into government and control the Treasury, which constitutionally assigns them that power over all of us. And that, as I said, is not new with this regime. How can we break this vicious circle?
So it was not going to be with the political parties, much less those that had already been in power -and others that without having been in power were very anxious to get into power using the same mechanism of the past- that we were going to count on for this reforming Constituent process, which is why we decided to set up and organize ourselves to educate and communicate our project at a national level, in order to directly convince Venezuelans. It has been very difficult to do it without money, but we continue working on it, trying to gather the necessary critical mass to turn the balance of these results. For this we have gone through intermediate milestones such as the Popular Consultation of 2017 and 2020, which allowed us to catapult us towards that higher goal of achieving to discuss a new country through a Constituent Process of an Original character.
At ANCO we thought, long before our foundation as an NGO in 2016, that it was the people who should decide the destiny of the country through a Constituent process. Let the people decide! is the slogan. The problem was HOW we got there. Initially we raised it through the provision of Constitutional Article 348, collecting 15% of the wills of the Electoral Registry, legally basing our right to collect and count, without the intermediation of any public power, especially the CNE, that aspiration.
I will not explain here the specific details of that collection process, which materialized in small organizations scattered all over the country, called Juntas Activadoras del Poder Constituyente Originario (JAPCO) of ANCO, of which we swore in a great many all over the country.... until May 1st, 2017, when the regime appropriated our initiative and launched its own Constituent Assembly project, bypassing the popular will by not consulting the people on whether or not they wanted a Constituent Assembly, as indicated by the constitutional tradition initiated with the Constituent Assembly of 1999.
If 15% of the electoral roll of those years had been collected before that date, ANCO had foreseen in its Constituent Bases -our legal basis- to call upon the International Community and the Venezuelan people to confirm the validity of our proposal to the country and the world, challenging the Armed Forces to support the Venezuelan people in their mandate to call for an original constituent process. The idea in essence of those years was a proposal that would materialize with people in the streets requesting the fulfillment of the protagonist mandate of the people established in the Constitution. The Bases for the constituent process have been written and foreseen, which guarantee proportionality, equity and the representation of all the social forces of the country, unlike what happened in 1999.
As of May 1st, 2017, everything changed. The regime used its Constituent to consolidate its hold on power and the official opposition, battered by the suspension of the recall process the previous year, agreed to cohabit with it. To continue collecting signatures for a process that we knew was the salvation of the country became impossible as the population saw that "the regime's constituent" had sunk the possibility of recovering freedom.
ANCO then turned to insist that the people speak out. And we achieved that as Venezuelans in two successful popular consultations whose mandate is still pending execution.
Now, from here to where? ANCO already pronounced itself last December 12, anniversary of the Popular Consultation, reaffirming the Constituent Assembly as, and I quote, "...The space for the Refoundation and the Protagonistic Self-Determination of the Venezuelan people", explaining in detail that there are sufficient legal bases in our legal and constitutional system for the people to legitimately pronounce themselves and call for a National Constituent Assembly of an Original character without the intervention of any of the Public Powers of the regime (see in Spanish ANCO Communiqué The Constituent Assembly, in https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/2021/12/comunicado-anco-la-asamblea.html). But again, many of you keep asking yourselves, even if we as a people can call for a Constituent Assembly without the intervention of the Public Powers, would the regime allow us to do that, accepting what the people decide? Obviously not. Nor would we be able to convene it in the best of cases under the terms established in Article 348 of the Constitution, under penalty of falling into the well-known electoral traps and violent advantageous practices.
And it is there where we must clearly state that even if we know what the solution is, we cannot implement it without the help of the external force represented by the International Community. And what is then the approach? ANCO announced to the country and the International Community on August 8, 2021 a Roadmap for Refounding the Nation that clearly states our position, which fully coincides with that of the USA, the European Union and Canada in the sense that, and I quote: "The peaceful solution to this deep political, social and economic crisis must come from the Venezuelan people themselves, through wide-ranging negotiations driven by Venezuelans, in which all interested actors participate". End of quote. And there is no greater interested actor than the mourners of this 22 year tragedy than the Venezuelan people (see in Spanish ANCO Communiqué reaffirms and proposes to the Country and the International Community a route to Refound the Nation, in https://ancoficial.blogspot.com/2021/08/anco-reafirma-y-propone-al-pais-y-la.html).
Our proposal for this Constituent Assembly can be summarized in a true negotiation in favor of Venezuelans, not the political interests of the negotiators, and among all those involved in the Venezuelan problem. That is to say, a negotiation where a representation of the International Community, made up at least by the USA, EU, Colombia and Brazil, the latter two countries being the direct protagonists of our migratory problem; a representation with the participation of ANCO and others of the Venezuelan Civil Society, first order sufferer of the political, social and economic crisis in Venezuela; a representation of the political parties of the National Assembly of 2015, and a representation of those who usurp the power in Venezuela.
The discussion and the only issue to be dealt with in this new negotiation would be the calling and execution of a National Constituent Assembly of an Original character, with the intermediation or electoral arbitration of the International Community. Note that here I do not say "international observation". And I do not say so because there cannot be another electoral process in Venezuela administered by the regime before it leaves power and the Electoral Power is reconstructed, as well as the rest of the Public Powers. Hence, the electoral administration of that Constituent process must come out of that negotiation table with the help of the International Community, as well as the Electoral Bases that will regulate the participation of Venezuelans, candidates to Constituents and voters, in that Constituent process.
And you will say, why should the regime be there? For the same reason why the International Community is summoning us all to negotiate a peaceful and electoral solution: to avoid bloodshed in Venezuela. But there is another fundamental reason that has been part of our constituent discourse since the beginning many years ago: a constituent cannot be possible without the participation of all political tendencies, including those we have rejected. Otherwise, it could not be called a Constituent process. Chávez ignored this fundamental concept leaving out, with his Bases Comiciales of the 1999 Constituent Assembly, around half of the Venezuelans, violating the principle of proportional representation, where 46% of those who opposed him were represented by only 6 Constituents out of 131 elected. In other words, with 54% of the votes, Chavismo won 96% of the seats in the 1999 Constituent Assembly. And that, in my opinion, was the beginning of all this tragedy that is consuming us in Venezuela. There cannot be a new Social Pact anywhere in the world with peace and political stability without the balanced participation of absolutely all its nationals.
Our task from now on, and hopefully with the help of all of you, will be to convince the governments of the countries that are strong enough to bring all those involved to the negotiating table, that a dubious election of positions within the framework of a tyranny is not the solution to the Venezuelan crisis but the legitimate election of the true representation of the Venezuelan people as established in the Constitution in Articles 347, 348 and 349, and to get them to help us enforce the will of what comes out of that Constituent election. Once that body of constituent assembly members is elected, the first obvious decision would be to decide to dismantle the regime and appoint a Transitional Government, establishing a period for the purging and election of the Public Powers, and for the deliberation of a new Social Pact and a new Constitution for Venezuela, based on a new architecture of power, which we hope will be as similar as possible to the one we propose in our Project The Great Change. This is what we interpret as the Refoundation that the country requires.
¿Es muy larga esta Ruta? Definitivamente no. En 1999 el proceso Constituyente duró mucho menos de un año, entre la Consulta Popular Constituyente con la aprobación de las Bases Comiciales, la elección (con campaña incluida) de los candidatos a Constituyentes, la designación de los Constituyentes electos y la promulgación de una nueva Constitución, con la elección y designación correspondiente de los Poderes Públicos con base al nuevo texto Constitucional. Menores lapsos dependerán de la voluntad política de los involucrados.
In this Constituent Assembly would be the new political representatives elected by the people of all the regions of the country, which is certainly a very heartfelt aspiration of all Venezuelans. Definitely, the Constituent solution surpasses in representativeness, quality and power any other Constitutional solution, resolving not only the succession in the Executive Power, but also the restoration of the Constitutional order deeply affected by the political crisis of the country, giving a solid basis to the International Community to identify who will be the new legitimate representatives of Venezuela.
To conclude, I wish to recall the words that our late comrade, friend and co-founder of ANCO, representative for the State of Guárico, Hinderburgo Becerra, used to say to all Venezuelans: "do not keep looking for God in the corners when He is right in front of your eyes". What is at stake is not our future, which has already been consumed after 22 years of struggle against this regime, but that of the next generations, our children and grandchildren. We invite you to take up this banner for change that ANCO offers you with no other interest than the rescue of a lasting freedom and the creation of a country with opportunities. If you accept this invitation invoking the help and favor of Almighty God and the creative powers of the Venezuelan people, I am more than sure that we will achieve it...
Thank you very much...
Caracas, December 16, 2021
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
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