VENEZUELA’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM:

A Threat to What Was Won Through Struggle

from El Libertario, Caracas

This is the editorial from the November edition of the Venezuelan anarchist journal El Libertario, analyzing the controversy over the pending constitutional reform, from a position harshly critical of both the Hugo Chávez government and the conservative opposition. In El Libertario’s view, the conflict is between rival sectors of Venezuela’s elite for control of the country’s lucrative energy resources—with the Chavista sector now making a grab for total power. This translation provided by El Libertatio was slightly edited by WW4 REPORT.

Once again we must consider the dilemma of whether to participate or not in the electoral contest, this time with the difference that it is not a case of choosing a candidate but rather constitutional norms. This situation requires careful reflection. We have a ruling party that accepts en masse the reforms proposed by the Boss and increased embarrassingly in a premeditated manoeuvre by a servile National Assembly. The absurdities of the original constitutional reforms [of 1999] were so many that it set the scene for the comical debate which has resulted in a plastering of equally aberrant additions. There is no serious debate of content and reasons, only discourses that are submissive to the tyrant, without any other sustaining logic than the desire to keep him in power. On the other hand, the institutional opposition stumbles in the darkness, not knowing how to confront it, relying on discourses and spokesmen from the past. They content themselves with showing through the media a small part of the absurdities that the Constitutional Reform contains—precisely those parts that threaten their own narrow interests, such as the rule changes of the political game—without any clear position or concrete campaign.

Thus, we suggest that faced with the alternatives of either voting for the rejection of the Constitutional Reform or abstaining, it is better to renounce participation in the Referendum and promote abstention. The timid questions that arise from the grassroots supporters of the Chavez regime clearly demonstrate the general [low] level of analysis and understanding of the proposals, highlighting the infantilization of the discourse promoted equally by the leaders of the militaristic pseudo-left in power and the right-wing and social democrat opposition.

We can partially see the logic behind the rush to change what up until recently has been sold as the “best constitution in the world.” The oil bonanza allows the executive to increase its broad client network in readiness for the coming electoral showdown. In addition to this is the clear opportunism by which, bypassing proper electoral norms, the Government conducts its “Yes” campaign, forcing the support of public sector employees and everyone else who is dependent on public finance. The precariousness and lack of independence of the electoral process is illustrated by the trajectory of the last head of the CNE [National Electoral Council], Jorge Rodríguez, who is now Vice-President.

We believe that with or without voters, the Reform will be passed. However, through abstention it is possible to make it illegitimate, even when it is [technically] legal. A very low number of voters in the coming poll would be a way of debilitating the regime from making any further moves, demonstrating that there is no “revolution” in popular participation, but rather a deepening of presidential personalism. If you believe that this is unimportant because the Government will consolidate its power anyway (which will happen regardless), or because people prefer to be on the winning side even when its victory is deceitful or fraudulent, remember that there is always a space to negate the validity of the leadership due to its illegitimacy. An illegitimate Government, despite maintaining itself in power, dissolves the tacit relationship of obedience that the population bestows upon it, removing, even if partially, the collective acceptance of its activity, and thus the implementation of its mandates have to based increasingly on the authoritarian exercise of power.

A significant abstention would mark the separation of the people, their aspirations and desires from those who hold State power, breaking the voluntary servitude that makes it possible to govern. It would also highlight the failure of the State as an institution that manages collective life… Of course the transition from the current situation to a clear and coherent horizon of social justice and liberty will not be achieved in a short period of time. The avoidance of shortcuts and a focusing on the reconstruction of intransigent and autonomous grassroots social movements is, without doubt, a long road, but it is also the most realist. A first step in this direction would be a complete understanding of what confronts us in this country, a perspective that is both realist and utopian, which will not be found in the ballot boxes this December.

It is also relevant to consider the situation after the ineluctable ratification of the Reform. From January 2008, new powers granted by the National Assembly to the President, based in the approved constitution and through the mechanism of the Ley Habilitante (which gives Chavez the ability to pass laws without recourse to Congress) will be established. It will be necessary to withhold efficiency from the offensive prepared by the ruling party in order to have absolute power…. We underline the fact that Governmental and State actions to imprison public opinion in their own hands have already begun. This process implies a set of measures tending towards silencing dissidence, criminalizing protest, squashing any sort of opposition to the State and leading the country in an authoritarian manner, ready to punish dissenting attitudes…

The State’s economic boom is not exclusively subordinate to the price of a barrel of oil… The plans for social support are financially backed up by the current surplus of funds, but if this ceased to be the case, due to the overwhelming financial liabilities of the state, it would be necessary to employ regressive policies that would negatively affect the population such as devaluations, tax increases, cutbacks in the Misiones program [grassroots development initiative] and other measures… These factors will generate social conflicts that will be suffocated by different repressive means according to each case.

Faced with this panorama, those of us who don’t renounce liberty and social justice must prepare ourselves to confront a general increase of coercion and collective control. This must be done without becoming paranoid; we know that we are not faced with the military government of Myanmar but rather an expression of neo-militarism as an efficient model for maintaining the despotic domination of Venezuelan society, in the service of the global energy market. All of this suggests that we must prepare ourselves for the escalation of repression, legitimized by the constitution that will be approved in December and that will consecrate the architecture of the totalitarian State. Moving beyond the conservative and reactionary elements of the media-driven opposition, the social struggle must confront the governmental Leviathan by developing new, creative and unexpected forms of organization and resistance.

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This article first appeared in the November issue of El Libertario, Caracas
http://www.nodo50.org/ellibertario

RESOURCES

Text of the Ley Habilitante
Venezuelan Ministry of Popular Power
http://www.mintra.gov.ve/legal/leyesordinarias/leyhabilitante.html

Misiones Bolivarianas
Venezuelan Ministry of Popular Power
http://www.misionesbolivarianas.gob.ve/

See also:

FREE SPEECH IN VENEZUELA
The case of RCTV and the fictional democratization of communication
from El Libertario, Caracas
WW4 REPORT, July 2007
/node/4155

From our weblog:

Venezuela destabilization document emerges: real?
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2007
/node/4726

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Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingVENEZUELA’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM: 

VENEZUELA’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM:

What’s at Stake

by Sujatha Fernandes, ZNet

On Sunday Dec. 2, Venezuelans will return to the voting booths to ratify or reject two slates of constitutional reforms, 33 of which have been proposed by President Hugo Chávez and 36 additional reforms made by the National Assembly. Included in the proposed reforms to Venezuela’s 1999 constitution are an increase in the presidential term from six to seven years and a removal of the two-term limit, a shortening of the work week to 36 hours, the suppression of the right to information during national emergencies, the elimination of the autonomy of the central bank, increased funding for communal councils, the creation of new forms of collective property, the requirement of gender parity in positions of public office, and the recognition of Afro-Venezuelan groups, in addition to indigenous groups included in the previous reforms.

This mixed bag of proposed reforms has provoked polarized reactions across the country, and from international observers. The familiar cries of “dictadura” (dictatorship) coming from the opposition camp are no surprise, but the student protests coming out of the main public and private universities of Caracas, and the renegade voices within Chávez’s own administration have caused some confusion over where the fault lines lie. Some social movements supporting Chávez have been concerned that retrogressive proposals are mixed together with progressive reforms, making it difficult to campaign and vote on the issues as a bloc. What is at stake in Venezuela’s upcoming reform referendum? Does the outcry over the reforms signal yet again the frustrations of a thwarted opposition in its ongoing tussles with the government, or is there something more at play?

It is important to understand the anatomy of the various social forces who have thrown their hat into the ring. The long-term anti-Chavista camp, opposed to the proposed reforms, is divided over what strategy to take to the reform referendum. Some opposition parties, including Primero Justicia, Un Nuevo Tiempo, and the Christian Democratic COPEI have begun a campaign to encourage people to vote “No” to the reforms. By contrast, the National Resistance Command, which includes opposition parties such as Acción Democrática (AD), Alianza Bravo Pueblo and Bandera Roja called for a boycotting of the referendum and have mobilized people in the streets for their cause, although the AD retracted this position and joined the “No” campaign just a few days later. Like in earlier moments, the opposition’s indecisiveness and its inability to come to a united decision about how to confront Chávez has weakened its political impact.

In a surprising move, Chávez’s former Defense Minister Raul Isais Baduel who had played an important role in restoring Chávez to power during the 2002 coup, also came out against the constitutional reforms and urged people to vote “No” in the upcoming referendum. The former army commander described the changes as a “coup d’état” that would concentrate further power in the hands of the president, saying that there was no need to overhaul the 1999 constitution. Some were concerned that the defection of a senior military figure could have an impact on the armed forces, but so far there is no indication that this should be the case. It also seems that Baduel’s opposition stems from his concerns over the proposed changes to Article 328, which would require changes to the structure of the Armed Forces.

Resistance to the reforms has also come from opposition-identified student protesters from the large public Universidad Central de Venezuela (UCV), as well as private institutions such as the Andrés Bello Catholic University and the Universidad Simón Bolívar (USB). During October and early November, students marched four times to the National Assembly, the National Electoral Council (CNE), and the Supreme Court to demand that the referendum be stopped. The students attacked security forces with rocks and bottles, breaking down security barriers, and starting fires, and the forces responded with tear gas and water cannons, producing violent clashes in the streets that received national and international coverage. Pro-Chávez students organized counter-rallies to protest in support of the reforms. The pro- and anti-Chávez student activists are divided along class lines, with aspiring upwardly mobile or privileged elite students forming the core of the large demonstrations that are opposing the reforms.

The violence between anti-Chávez and pro-Chávez students reached a climax on Nov. 7, when a group of opposition students returning to the UCV from a rally surrounded the School of Social Work, a traditionally left-wing division, and held a siege of the building where 123 pro-Chávez students and staff had been making posters and planning their activities for the “Yes” campaign. In the opposition-controlled media, the events were falsely reported as a case of masked gunmen who opened fire on peaceful opposition student protesters.

On the day that the National Assembly approved the set of proposed reforms to go before a public referendum, José Manuel González, the president of Fedecámaras, the Venezuelan business association, announced that “Venezuelan democracy was buried today.” Opposition parties and media, the business federation, Gen. Baduel, and opposition-identified students all frame their disapproval of the reforms as a concern that democracy is being eroded. This framing is consistent with the charges that the opposition has leveled at the Chávez government from the start, and is in keeping with their limited notion of democracy as procedural democracy.

Procedural democracy, derived from Western experiences of representative government, is based on the rule of law, free and fair elections, and a separation of powers between the executive, legislative, and the judicial branches of government. At the time of the drawing up of the 1999 constitution, opposition critics complained that the executive branch was being expanded at the expense of other branches. The opposition expressed concerns that Chávez threatened judicial autonomy by intervening in the court system through disbarring judges and increasing the size of the Supreme Court, and that he had unduly increased the power of the military. They continue to make the same charges against the current proposed reforms to expand the presidential term by a year and remove limits on holding office, saying that this concentrates power in the executive.

Yet this focus on procedural democracy functions as a means of protecting hierarchies of existing power. The abstract concepts of the rule of law, separation of powers, and procedure inherent in liberal discourse assume the participation of rational, autonomous individuals who share equality under the law, without taking into account the tremendous inequalities in Venezuelan society. For marginal sectors, the liberal logic of procedural democracy can not be easily reconciled with histories of discrimination in a class and racially stratified landscape. Some have argued that the greater power being given to the executive may indeed be necessary in order to bring about the redistribution of social wealth and property that could alter the entrenched class structure.

At the same time, some in the Chavista camp are also uneasy about the reforms, albeit for different reasons. In October, community media activists from the National Association of Free and Alternative Media (ANMCLA) had expressed concern over the proposed changes to Article 337, which would remove the right to information of citizens during states of emergency. The move was justified by the Chávez government as a response to the manipulation by the media that took place during the 2002 coup. But activists from ANMCLA see the proposed restrictions on the right to information during times of emergency as dangerous recourse to a tool that has been used by powerful sectors throughout Latin American history to detain, persecute, and silence the population. The revolution should not be defended through censorship, argue ANMCLA, but rather through millions of voices on the air, as demonstrated during the 2002 coup.

The Agency of Alternative News (ANA), the ANMCLA agency that provides an alternative news source to the government-controlled Bolivarian Agency of News (ABN), also circulated a piece written by UCV Sociologist Javier Biardeau that questioned the route of constitutional reform as a means to effect changes in Venezuelan society. Referring to reforms in the legal arena as a “minefield,” Biardeau argues that constitutional reforms are a limited means to transform the state in a transition towards socialism. He concurs with journalist and blogger José Roberto Duque, who acknowledges that the constitutional reform is an attempt to accelerate and deepen the revolutionary process, but that for the moment it has only succeeded in sparking some dramatic exchanges without really touching any powerful interests.

The path of constitutional reform by plebiscite that has been taken by the Chávez government has also closed off other, more inclusive forums for the discussion of changes to the constitution. Rather than having a small group of representatives decide on the proposed reforms and then put them to the people in a referendum, Biardeau argues that it would have been preferable to convoke another Constituent Assembly to allow for a public debate and the broad participation of a range of social movements and popular groups. Through the proposed reforms, argues Biardeau, “21st century socialism” is being decreed from above rather than democratically debated and given substance from below.

As can be seen from the criticisms coming from social movements and commentators supportive of the Chávez government, it is possible and necessary to criticize the state’s attempts to monopolize power, not in the name of a procedural democracy, as the free-market proponents of the opposition would have it, but rather in the name of a substantive democracy that puts decision-making power in the hands of people organized within communal councils, assemblies, and popular organizations. On this account, “participation” is not limited to campaigning and mobilizing people to vote in the recall referendum on articles that have already been decided by a small group of representatives. It aspires to a local level of decision-making that would have people themselves determine the content of their laws and institutions.

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This story first appeared Nov. 11 on ZNet, and was also run by Upside Down World
http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/1000/68/

From our weblog:

Venezuela destabilization document emerges: real?
WW4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2007
/node/4726

——————-

Reprinted by WORLD WAR 4 REPORT, Dec. 1, 2007
Reprinting permissible with attribution

Continue ReadingVENEZUELA’S CONSTITUTIONAL REFORM: