August 15th., 2008

A New Coup D´Etat

We are before a dictatorship that has given a new coup d´etat to the Constitution.  This is about a plan to demolish the remains of the Republic.  The government acts as if it had just imposed a coup d´etat.  A de facto regime has been established.  The rule of law has been liquidated.  These are not headline news in the most radical opposition.  These are declarations from very respected personalities and institutions in the country, regarding the “Package of Laws” dictated by Chavez one day after the 18 month period that was granted to him by the National Assembly wherein he could legislate upon decrees.  The first one to react was Luis Miquilena, the ex president of the National Assembly that drafted the current Constitution.  Miquilena, a legendary left wing figure, convinced Chavez, once he was out of jail by the Presidential Pardon, to abandon his new rebellion project and to present himself as a presidential candidate in 1998.

He directed his electoral campaign, took on the presidency of the National Assembly and he was his political operator from the Ministry of Interior and retired from the government upon the bloody repression of the popular demonstration dated April 11, 2002. On the next day of the news of the “Package”, Miquilena declared:  “We are in the presence of a dictator government that has given a coup d´etat to the Constitution”. The following phrases that head the page are declarations from the Rectors of Universities, Directives of Legal and Political Sciences Academies, renowned professors of Constitutional Law and renown intellectuals. 

Jurists think that the 26 laws are non existent. They claim that the President was granted the competency to legislate within a determined period of time, and if within that period of time he failed to do so, the delegated faculty was concluded; if he did it later on, he is guilty of usurpation of authority.  “What gives life to laws is the knowledge of their existence by the citizens, and for this the publication of such laws in the Official Gazette is indispensable. This is what binds the citizens with the laws”.  The argument is strong, even if the regime alleges that the objection is nothing, because the texts are included in an Extraordinary Gazette dated July 31, 2008.  The District Attorney (National Attorney), whose purpose is to watch over compliance of the legal order, gave little importance to the public and notorious fact that the Gazette was published four days later:  “I have not read all of the Decrees, but they do not violate the Constitution”, she stated.  The Supreme Court of Justice, in sentences previous to July 31, gave the character of Organic Laws to some of the Decrees.

Some of the decrees repeat, sometimes literally, the reforms that were rejected in the December 2 referendum.  Article 345 of the Constitution establishes that the initiative of the Constitutional reform may not be presented once again in one same Constitutional period. It seems elemental that if the President may not present a new reform, he should not be able to modify the Constitutional text making use of his delegated faculty to legislate.  This is the argument of those who claim that the Constitution has died, since some of its articles have been modified by Presidential Decree, omitting the reform and referendum mechanisms that protect the Constitution in the Venezuelan legislation and in the legislation of any democratic country.

THE PACKAGE OF LAWS EXCEEDS THE IMAGINABLE

“We are going to deepen in the socialist plan, which guidelines do not suffer even if the reform was not approved”, manifested Chavez in his first Hello President of this year.  “We are in political and economic conditions to fully enter into the Socialist revolution, because we are strengthened to intensify it”, as expressed in his last Hello President.  A global vision of the 26 laws confirms the thesis that Chavez took advantage of the enabling law to introduce the key guidelines of the changes rejected on December 2.  As per the Constitution, the National Armed Forces (FAN) is comprised by the Army, the Navy, the Aviation and the National Guard.  The Package of laws, as proposed by the reform, adds a fifth component, as a special body:  The Bolivarian Military Militia, under direct command of the President, who not only has the purpose but the military level of Commander in Chief.  Chavez, who passed to the condition of retired officer in 1994, now acquires the condition of active officer, in the top of the pyramid, with the right to a special uniform, level badges and the command baton established by the regulations.  If in the future, a civilian or a woman becomes President, they could use a military uniform with 5 suns in their shoulder pads.  An analyst comments that this is not tropical opera show.  There are more transcendental aspects. 

 It is established that the military education be oriented to “the formation of the new Venezuelan military thought”, inspired in the Bolivarian Socialism, that the FAN will act as the administrative police and of criminal investigation, and will participate in alliances or coalitions with the Armed forces of other countries to promote or defend the integration agreements.  There are integration agreements with Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua.

The rejected Reform authorized the President to create federal provinces and to designate regional vice presidents.  Upon the fear of loosing several mayor Governors and Major Offices, the new legislation authorizes to designate regional authorities, of free election and destitution by the President, giving an end to federalism and to the administrative decentralization that is consecrated in the Constitution.  “The model, as written by Teodoro Petkoff, is the figure of the Nazi gauleiter, who was, precisely, a regional authority designated by Hitler and transposed to the elected authorities of the German provinces”.

The elimination of the right of property was one of the main causes why the past December 2 referendum proposals were rejected.  Notwithstanding, Article 5 of the new Law for the Defense of the People in their access to Goods and Services, authorizes the expropriation of goods without the previous declaration of such goods to be of “public and social utility”.  The Law of Agricultural Nourishment Sovereignty and Security declares as public utility “the goods that ensure access to food” and “the infrastructures by which such food is produced”.  The mandatory acquisition of all that has to do with the commercialization chains and food distribution.  Other Laws regulate the economy, Banking, tourism, to mention a few, in such terms those industrials and merchants declare that with such provisions they can not keep functioning.  It is the “closing of the fence” to the private sector, they affirmed.

IS THERE AN ELECTORAL WAY OUT?

The new period of the revolution will be from 2008 to 2021 and it starts next November 23, as affirmed by Chavez in Hello President.  In the character’s bibliography, already numerous ones, it appears as relevant that he never hides his purposes.  He plays with the cards on the table, they say.  The phrase affords analysis, since he says it in a moment wherein the country is in commotion by the Package of Laws and the November 23 elections center the political debate.  Pursuant the December 2 referendum, Chavez ends his mandate in 2013 and he can not be a candidate for a new term.  In November Governors and Majors will be elected.  “We must pulverize the opposition, our triumph must be crushing in all the country”, this is what he claims daily in the events wherein he announces his support to the Government’s candidate.  Upon pointing out that the new period will be extended until 2021, he explains that the “little reform” he has been talking about, would not only be to allow him to be re elected for another term, since another mandate will conclude in 2020.  It is evident that the “little reform” would be to allow the indefinite re election, perpetual presidency.  With the precedent of the December 2 rejection, Chavez can not risk a referendum without a clamorous victory in November.  The consultation would have to be at the beginning of 2009, since all the economic and social indicators forecast an explosion of the repressed inflation (the one regarding food, with a currency exchange control, reached 49% in June) and an inevitable currency devaluation.  Chavez´ project is turning November 23 into a plebiscite.  The Presidential performance is described as such by ABN, the State’s Information Office.  The Government’s candidates center their campaigns in the exaltation of Chavez and the revolution.  The Minister of Communication and Information was in charge of directing the candidates´ propaganda.

 The independent press coincides in that the functioning of all the State’s machinery has been started to impose the candidates elected by Chavez.  The opposition candidates, the ones that appear as winners in the polls, have been disqualified by the Government.  In the Official Gazette dated August 6, the President of PDVSA appears as authorized to develop political activities, which is expressly forbidden by the Company’s By Laws, “unless otherwise stated by the President”.  The same Gazette amplifies the Company’s purpose to “encourage the integral development of the country”, and “undergo the operations, contracts and commercial acts necessary or convenient”.  This is the legal ground for Pdval and Mercal, centers for importation, storage, food chains for the sale of food at subsidized prices.  PDVSA´s incomes in the first semester of 2008 were of US$ 40,000 Million.

As per reliable surveys, the names of the candidates for Governors and Majors already known to the public, the classic public opinion segmentation is as follows:  40% pro Chavez, 38% opposition, and 22% neutral.  The consolidated segmentation:  45% pro Chavez, 42% opposition, 13% neutrals.  The internal fracture of the patriotic front (government’s alliance) has had its consequences:  there is a 29% critic pro Chavez, which reduces the hard segment to a 16%.  The analysts that are afforded credit think that if the opposition achieves to rescue the regional and local character of the elections, preventing the plebiscite sense intended by Chavez, it could win in the most important States and Municipalities, obtaining, nationally, more votes than Chavez, as it happened in December 2.  As long as the electoral entities count the votes.  Last but not least.  The CNE has not yet given the results of the December 2 election.  It only announced that the NO option had won.