Constitutional reforms in Venezuela

http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/2764

Limitations on Rights During Emergencies

During the second round of debates, the National Assembly proposed a reform to article 337 of the constitution that would call for the suspension of certain political liberties during what is known as a “state of exception,” or national emergency. Articles 240 and 241 of the 1961 Constitution similarly included limitations on civil and political rights during times of national emergency.


While this reform has been criticized, it is fully consistent with similar powers granted to democratic governments around the world. Since the time of the French revolution, governments have recognized that during moments of massive disasters or extreme and imminent threats to the standing and security of the nation additional and temporary powers could be claimed by the executive to restore order. Currently a number of Western democracies have laws outlining the imposition of a state of exception or a state of emergency, including Australia, Canada, France, Ireland, Spain and the United Kingdom. In the United States, the 1976 National Emergencies Act allows the president to invoke a state of emergency and limit certain rights – including the right of habeas corpus – for up to two years. There were 32 declared national emergencies between 1976 and 2001.

On August 15, 2007, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez proposed a number of reforms to the 1999 Constitution. Focusing on a small segment of the constitution’s 350 articles, the reforms aim to speed the redistribution of the country’s resources to benefit the poor and widen the base of direct citizen participation in the democratic process. They are also intended to move Venezuela towards a new model of development – known as “Socialism for the 21st Century” – in peace and democracy. This model embraces participatory democracy, a mixed economy, meeting the country’s social needs and promoting a multi-polar world.

encroachment on their civil rights--a vigilant, aware, politically active population, with leaders who are beholden to the people through transparent elections. The leaders of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez in particular, are doubly beholden to the people, not only due to extraordinarily transparent and highly monitored elections, but also because the people thronged into the streets in the tens of the thousands in 2002 and stopped an attempted rightwing military coup. But for them, Chavez would likely be dead--and civil rights would be dead as well, for the first thing that the short-lived rightwing junta did, after kidnapping Chavez, was to suspend the Constitution, the court system and the National Assembly (congress).

In the U.S., we have found out that the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are not worth the paper they are written on, if we don't have leaders who are answerable to us, who have achieved power legitimately in transparent elections, and who have not been bought and paid for by global corporate predators.

Truly, this is the only guarantee. In Venezuela, they use electronic voting, but it is OPEN SOURCE code--anyone may review the programming code by which votes are tabulated--and they handcount a whopping 55% of the votes, as a check on machine fraud. Their elections are also heavily monitored--by the Carter Center, the OAS and EU election groups. Their President and National Assembly are genuinely popular--Chavez with an approval rating of 70%--and hold power legitimately. These leaders would therefore be very unlikely to invoke any emergency powers, or curtail any rights, except in a genuine emergency.

Here, we have highly insecure and insider riggable electronic voting machines run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations, with virtually no audit/recount controls. The handcount is 0% in some states (!), and only 1%--totally inadequate--in the best states--a NON-TRANSPARENT vote counting system that was rushed into place, during the 2002 to 2004 period, as a means of shoving an unjust war and other fascist policy down the throats of the American people. Neither the President of the United States, nor the 'Democratic' Congress gives a fuck for our rights--no surprise, since almost none of them can prove that they were actually elected.

The Constitution names many rights that we inherently possess, but those rights can be, and have been, eliminated, by an arbitrary, illegitimate and criminal government. Our only peaceful recourse is to throw the criminals and other traitors out of office by voting, but that recourse has been taken away, and, as a consequence, our rights grow fewer and weaker every day. We don't even have the bottom line of democracy any more in the U.S.: transparent vote counting--vote counting that everyone can see and understand.

We do likely have a window of opportunity--I'd say three or four years--in which to restore transparent vote counting, by public pressure campaigns at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some influence. A strong election integrity movement is already in progress, and I think we will win, eventually--but our country may suffer considerably more grief before democracy is restored.

It has been a shock to us to discover that our inherent rights, named in the Constitution's Bill of Rights, are as fragile as they are, and subject to the whims of idiots and criminals. But for those who have been tortured, killed or otherwise harmed by this regime, I would say that maybe it has been a good thing to be reminded how quickly, and by what sleights-of hand, democracy can disappear. We thought we had a system of the rule of laws not men. We wake up and find that it has been overturned, by a President with a 24% approval rating, a Vice President with a 17% approval rating, and a Congress with an 11% approval rating.

Besides the bottom line of democracy--transparent vote counting--a further guarantee probably exists in the good will, good intentions and proper education of our fellow and sister citizens, and especially of those who rise to positions of power and authority. But this, too, has been greatly damaged--the common assumptions and common decency of our leaders. I strongly feel that most Americans still believe in democracy. Many of our leaders do not. And some of them--including Bush and Cheney--are vicious fascists, out to destroy everything we hold dear. Their extremism, in turn, draws so-called "liberal" members of the political establishment far over to the right, so that someone like Hillary Clinton states that she will "consider" the fascist powers that the Bushites have asserted, and apparently intends to pick and choose among these fascist powers, for those that she wishes, in her royal noblesse oblige, to retain, and those she will put on hold.

Detention without charge, indefinite detention, right to a speedy and public trial, security in our persons and homes, torture, rendition, spying--all are "on the table" at the emperor's banquet that Bush and Cheney have prepared.

This is the current status of our "Constitutionally guaranteed" rights: that our leaders think they can pick and choose among them.

Over the last 4 or 5 decades, our political establishment has been heavily influenced (bought and paid for) by corporate predators whose sub-culture is "dog eat dog" and then--when the vicious bite-fest is done--"big dog eats everything else." Corporations are inherently lawless, callous, unaccountable and irresponsible, and need to be strongly regulated and curtailed by an alert citizenry and a strong democratic government. Just as dogs need a strong hand, corporations must be taught to behave, and, if need be, restrained by force. Their goals are profit and power. Nothing else matters to them. They have no loyalty, no patriotism, no humanism, no compassion. They are in fact less virtuous than dogs, and, if we are going to continue with some sort of capitalism, they MUST be brought to heel, for the common good.

Over the last 2 decades--and very intensely during the last 7 years--we have seen a full-on corporate predator takeover of the White House, the Congress and the Courts, and, to some extent, the military as well, in addition to predatory corporate power at the state and local levels. Corporate "dog eat dog" behavior--oddly paired with 'christian' fundamentalism--has infected our entire political system. It is destroying our democracy, our economy, and tens of millions of lives, and is threatening the planet itself and all life on earth.

To change this, we must start with the bottom line: transparent vote counting. Then we can discuss having a Constitution. We don't have one now.

In Venezuela, they give out miniature copies of their Constitution to everyone, and print parts of the Constitution on grocery store bags. They have achieved 100% literacy (in a breathtakingly short time), and most people have read their Constitution. In the remarkable documentary, by Irish filmmakers, "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised"--a film about the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela--you will note that the first thing on peoples' minds, during the coup, was their Constitution (concern for Chavez was important but secondary). "What about our Constitution?" they cried. It would difficult to deprive such a people of their rights. They put us to shame, really. We need to learn from them. And I think their rights are in very safe hands--their own.