When we stubbornly insist that the country's institutional system must be changed, we mistakenly believe that people understand us. Anything involving the word "change" will meet with people's natural resistance. The famous definition of Einsteinian madness that says that insisting on doing the same thing and expecting different results is ultimately a vicious circle that never ends in our country. That is why the same political actors insist on applying their same (electoral) formulas to the serious crisis that afflicts us, hoping to achieve different results with this pile of delinquents, achieving again and again the same failed results.
Hence, it is necessary to go a little further, explaining the reason for the changes that must be implemented in Venezuela, in the hope of being able to convince Venezuelans that this is not, in the end, the route to fight for in order to get out of this tragedy. And for that it is necessary to begin by analyzing that initial expression, "the institutional system", which has defined the power relations in Venezuela, not just now, but practically since the beginning of the Republic as an independent State. However, as there are many changes proposed in our project, The Great Change, for now I will begin by explaining the fundamental change that must be mainly implemented, which is none other -nothing more and nothing less- than that of the structure of the Constitution.
From the "Constitution of the State of Venezuela of September 24, 1830", which was the title of the fundamental text of our country approved after the separation of Venezuela from Gran Colombia, to the present day, the power structure applied to the Constitution has been the same: minimum definition of the Public Powers: Executive, Legislative and Judicial, with delegation to the Executive Power of the Administration of the National Public Treasury and the Armed Forces, with the corresponding controls delegated to the Legislative Power.
This centralized structure of power, in the hands of the Executive Power, of all our Constitutions since 1830, has been the indisputable seal of the Venezuelan historical evolution. The Executive centralizes the power of arms and the money of all Venezuelans. That is not bad in itself. That is the system we have given ourselves since the beginning of republican times. But it has a structural flaw: it is highly dependent on the efficiency of those who occupy the only position of power in the country. Or to put it another way, the rule established in all our fundamental pacts between the governed and the governors, gives those who govern us in the Executive Power, the license to do whatever they want with what belongs to all of us.
And although there "should" be counterweights with the rest of the powers (Legislative and Judicial, 3 until the 1961 Constitution), unfortunately throughout our history these mechanisms defined as such in the Fundamental Pact, the Constitution, have not been efficient enough to prevent the excesses of those who have held power in Venezuela. There has never been a balance between the Public Powers, causing that those who have exercised the Executive Power have permanently had a pernicious influence in the administration of what belongs to all, bringing as a consequence underdevelopment and poverty, and lately institutional destruction of the State and massive exodus of the population.
So, the first conclusion we can draw from this completely verifiable fact is that the problems of Venezuelans will never be solved only by changing the Executive Power (in other words, another President), but by changing the structure and the whole system of relations between the components that would make up a new structure to be defined. And that brings us to the definition of system.
I will take the definition of Karl Ludwig von Bertalanffy (1901-1972), in his General Systems Theory, which has been generally accepted by all and applied to many fields of human knowledge: "A system is defined as a set of elements that interact with each other". This definition coincides with the definition of the DRAE: "1. A set of rules or principles on a subject rationally linked to each other" (see in Spanish definition of System in DRAE in https://dle.rae.es/sistema?m=form).
The system of relations between the different Public Powers defines the "institutional system" we have in Venezuela. If we define in our fundamental Pact that there will be an Executive Power that will administer the Public Treasury of the country and the arms of the Republic, establishing also that the remaining Powers will control it, there will be no way out of that trap if the Executive Power manages to evade through the penetration -or corruption- of the remaining powers, to control the system and its structure, the latter defined in the DRAE as the "1.f. Disposition or way in which the parts of a whole are related" (see in Spanish definition of Structure in the DRAE, in https://dle.rae.es/estructura?m=form). The latter is what has been happening in Venezuela for the last 23 years.
Then, it is up to the free will of whoever occupies the office of the President of the country to do things in accordance or not with the Constitution, because that is how it was established within the system of institutional relations defined in it. That is, in our system and since the beginning of the Republic of Venezuela, we have tied the whole life of the country to one person, the President -and those under his control- from the very definition of the Pact. From this we conclude that for the system to work, regardless of who the President is, we must define it in such a way that the power rests on an institutional structure as close as possible to those who are affected by its mismanagement. That is, to the citizens.
These principles were not invented by me. They were first outlined by Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826), drafter of the American Declaration of Independence, where he clearly stated that, first, the power of governments derives from their citizens, their primary responsibility being to protect life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And secondly, that this power must be arbitrated and administered by Laws and Institutions, NOT BY PEOPLE. In other words, within a Rule of Law, regardless of who holds the power. This must be clearly structured and systematized in the Constitution, and we have done the opposite.
The Fundamental Change that ANCO proposes in its proposal The Big Change (see in Spanish The Great Change, A Proposal for the Refoundation of Venezuela, in https://tinyurl.com/5n6enjrr), is to turn the pyramid of power in Venezuela upside down. To establish in our fundamental Pact that power and the administration of resources should no longer be absolutely in the hands of the Executive Power, but that it should be broken -from lesser to greater power- in the many federal entities that exist in the country, and in the many municipalities defined by the citizens within each federal entity, according to their own current political-territorial reality. That power be found fundamentally in the Municipalities, which is where the citizens live and develop, then in the States, as a political entity, and then in the Federal Government, the genuine representative of all of them.
By dissolving the Power in many, many pieces, it will be virtually impossible for a single person and his accomplices to ruin and rob us massively in the future, as this system of existing power relations, with Hugo Chávez Frías and Nicolás Maduro Moros at the head, has already done.
We must change the system, not the people. We are aware that starting from this fundamental premise, there will be many changes and new ways of exchange in institutional relations, which must be built completely from scratch, such as, for example, the income distribution system, currently defined in the Constitution. This new system of relations will mean that it will NOT be the President in his Council of Ministers who decides how much to give to the regions or what project to develop in them, within the multiple mechanisms that are established in a Public Treasury that is currently managed as the checkbook of the parties that administer the power of the day.
Each State and Municipality in a new system of institutional relations would not be the ones to receive but the ones to contribute to a new federal set according to the potential of each one, and between all of them formalize a Pact to finance the Federal Government constitutionally. We are not talking about "decentralizing". NO. We are talking about defining a new Republic based on the contribution of all citizens, empowered from the bottom to the top of the pyramid, due to a new formulation of the institutional system.
This proposal requires convening the Constituent Assembly as soon as possible and proposing to the legitimate representatives of the people in a National Constituent Assembly, a new way of conceiving the current institutional system, which has historically harmed us and which is completely exhausted. And this involves first explaining to the citizens of Venezuela that these changes, which would bring about a profound redefinition of the political system, go beyond the simplistic idea of changing a President in an election that for now is inconsequential, but which would empower them to materialize the Refoundation of the Nation, necessary for the welfare of the new generations.
Caracas, August 30, 2022
Blog: https://ticsddhh.blogspot.com/
Email: luismanuel.aguana@gmail.com
Twitter:@laguana
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