[From SolidarityEconomy.net editors: While there's been plenty of coverage of Chavez's 'ruling by decree,' little has been said about the matters concerned and how its part of his country's legal system. It also gives an idea of how something like 'Economic Democracy' might be brought into being in other countries as well.]
By Venezuelanalysis.com, Caracas, January 17, 2007
Venezuela’s National Assembly approved a resolution yesterday, according to which the legislature would declare emergency sessions for the approval of an "enabling law," which will allow President Chavez to pass law-decrees on specific issues in the next 18 months. The National Assembly (AN) will begin deliberations on the law tomorrow.
Chavez had asked the AN for an "enabling law," during his swearing-in ceremony last week, saying that such a law is necessary to accelerate the process of creating 21st century socialism in Venezuela. Chavez presented the AN with the proposed law last Saturday.
The proposed law, for which there is express permission in Article 203 of Venezuela’s 1999 constitution, would allow Chavez to pass decrees that have the legal standing of laws in ten different areas. The last time Chavez was allowed to make use of this provision was in 2001, when he passed 49 law-decrees. Previous presidents, such as Carlos Andrés Perez in 1976, were also given temporary authority for such laws.
The ten areas in which Chavez will be allowed to legislate are:
1. Transformation of the institutions of the state. Chavez would be allowed to change state institutions so that these become more efficient, include greater citizen participation, and are more transparent.
2. Popular participation. Here the President would be allowed to develop norms that enable citizen participation in public oversight. Also part of this is the "enabling of the direct exercise of popular sovereignty." Exactly what is meant by this has so far not been explained.
3. Establishing norms for the eradication of corruption. This would also involve changing the civil service system.
4. The creation of norms for adopting existing legislation to the construction of a new social and economic model, in order to achieve equality and equitable distribution of wealth, under "the ideals of social justice and economic independence."
5. Finances and tax collection. The development of norms to modernize monetary, banking, insurance, and tax sectors.
6. Citizen and judiciary security. The development of norms for updating the systems of public health, citizen security, prisons, identification, migration, and judiciary.
7. Science and technology. Norms for the development of science and technology to satisfy the needs of education, health, environment, biodiversity, industrialization, quality of life, and defense.
8. Territorial order. Norms that establish a new territorial organization on the sub-national level, so as to optimize state action.
9. Security and defense. Norms for enabling the co-responsibility of state and organized communities by establishing a new functioning of the institutions of security and defense of the nation.
10. Infrastructure, transport, and services. Norms that support the use of the human and industrial potential and the existing infrastructure to improve transport systems, public services, home construction, and
telecommunications, among others.
email2friend
One needs to ask why, with one hundred percent of government branches controlled entirely by Chavez and his supporters, he has been granted the power to unilaterally decree legislation dealing with pretty much anything of any importance(security, the economy, state institutions)? Does he really see the democratically elected members of the National Assembly, all of whom support Chavez, as undemocratic impediments to 21st Century Socialism?
I understand that Chavez wants to move past “representative” democracy towards embracing the nebulous concept of “participatory” democracy, ostensibly founded in a new wave of communal councils that he is trying to institue. For the life of me, though, I cant understand what is “participatory” about allowing the executive to concentrate all meaningful power in his hands and dictate the radical reconstruction of almost aspect of his country, unchecked, over the next year and a half.
This is all occurring as Chavez and his allies move quickly towards consolidating all pro-Chavez parties into one gigantic United Socialist Party of Venezuela, with Chavez at the helm. Right now Chavez enjoys the support of a number of diverse leftist parties. The consolidation of all pro-Chavez parties into one united party will effectively transform Venezuela into a one party state.
Chavez and his supporters are adamant in their claim that 21st Century Socialism is a new, democratic and participatory project. Yet a Venezuela with literally ONE political party in power, whose president has the unilateral power to do whatever he wants, seems to me increasingly reminiscent of last century’s socialist projects which were anything but democratic, participatory or succesfull.
This is the start of a period of revolutionary transition. The old state apparatus, tied with a thousand threads to the old order, as Lenin put it, is being broken up. A new state is being constructed at the same time, and sometimes there’s less suffering and more democracy in the outcome, if things are done decisively and relatively quickly. It can be done well or horribly, but I wouldn’t be too quick to judge from afar. Sometimes you have to be there, and see it from within.
Even so, Chavez is still within Venezuelan law and tradition, even if he’s at the edge of it.
Nor is his larger, unified socialist party a ‘one-party state,’ even if it is the ruling party. Nothing wrong with that. So far, Chavez’s power to make decrees is for a limited period, but we’ll see if and why it might be extended. Other parties still exist, and compete, even if they don’t do too well, hold only a few seats, and are in opposition, rather than in power. Nothing wrong with that, either.
The opposition media has been regulated, but only threatened with being shut down if they’ve broken the law, as in actively plotting an illegal coup d’etat, which some of them clearly have. Given their record on that point, it’s a wonder they’re still around this long.
A popular democracy of mass participation is clearly a ‘radical rupture,’ as Marx put it, with a bourgeois democracy of contending elites corrupted by wealth, an Venezuela has never been a shining example of this old form, either.
The Venezuelan people are the best judges of this process, and it seems to have wide support. Keep your eyes wide open, but I think Chavez and the path he has launched deserves our solidarity, and solidarity also takes the form of speaking up when you think something’s amiss.
It’s funny that we haven’t heard any FDR parallels. Roosevelt was also a supremely popular, left-wing president whose radical restructuring and presidential authority bordered on the unconstitutional (court-packing, Order 9066, etc.). Not only did we prevail after the New Deal, but all but the most conservative of Americans will tell you that we’re better off because of it. All strong leaders who aim to radically reform their societies will undoubtedly test a lot of limits.
That said, I’m still cautious, given the political history of that whole region. As a socialist, I am very hopeful to see the economic model he will implement. Let’s just hope that he both renounces this “by fiat” way of leading his country as soon as possible, and that the socialization of the Venezuelan economy doesn’t just devolve into another centrally-planned, Gosplan monstrosity.
After all, we’d do well to keep in mind that Chavez is more than just the president of an emerging socialist state: he is an icon that many leaders look to and emulate. His country’s success or failure will either represent an unprecedented success or a crippling setback for the cause of socialism.