[Venezuelanalysis.com's Michael Fox argues that with all international eyes on the December 3rd Venezuelan presidential elections, a totally new and revolutionary experience of Venezuelan grassroots democracy has completely slipped below international radar. An experience that has already formed 12,000 local community councils, and whose participants and promoters hope will change the way decisions are made in Venezuela and potentially alter the very essence of Venezuela's political system. --Ed]
Venezuela’s Secret Grassroots Democracy
By Michael Fox – Venezuelanalysis.com
November 28, 2006
With all international eyes on the December 3rd Venezuelan presidential elections, a totally new and revolutionary experience of Venezuelan grassroots democracy has completely slipped below international radar. An experience that has already formed 12,000 local community councils, and whose participants and promoters hope will change the way decisions are made in Venezuela and potentially alter the very essence of Venezuela’s political system.
13 de Abril Community Council
The region of 23 de Enero lies on the southern hillsides in Western Caracas. Since the fall of the decade-long Marcos Perez Jimenez dictatorship in 1958, it has been an area of high community organization, when, on that day—January 23—thousands of poor Caraquenos (as Caracas residents are known) came down from the hillsides and occupied the vacant and newly built apartment blocks. It remained a place of revolt and of police repression. A region, according to one community member, that was “blamed for anything that happened.”
Earlier this year, residents again began to lead the way. Citizens living in the apartment building blocks 45, 46, and 47 heard about the new communal councils, which communities were beginning to form around the country.
These new communal councils were being called a new form of grassroots local government, in which the residents of the local community would have the ultimate decision-making power in their neighborhood. It was said that these councils would even receive funds from the government to carry out community and public works projects that previously could only be acquired through a long and protracted struggle with the local mayor’s office.
Members of the local health committee took the first steps to create their own council. They held workshops on the idea and elected a Provisional Promoter team in March, to carry out a census of the community’s residents and needs.
An electoral commission was soon elected to supervise the upcoming election of community spokespersons. Various community committees (infrastructure, sport, communication and information, energy and gas, and legal) where formed to join those already in the community (health, urban land) and the promoter team did it’s best to get the word out on the upcoming election.
On children’s day, June 16, with the support of the electoral commission, hundreds of residents from the community’s 520 apartments showed up for the communal council spokesperson elections.
“It was tremendous; the line didn’t end,” said Hector Haraque, describing the scene at blocks 45, 46, & 47 on Election Day. “It lasted all day, till 1 in the morning. It was very impressive.”
The community elected 5 financial spokespersons to manage the council’s resources, 5 social controllers to audit the council’s dealings, and one spokesperson for each of the community’s 9 committees. By the end of the month, the19 members where sworn in, and the April 13th Community Council was officially formed- the first in 23 de Enero.[1]
There are now 20 communal councils in 23 de Enero, more than 12,000 in the country, and more on the way. Which begs the questions: Where did this experience come from? Are these communal councils truly empowering residents and building a Venezuelan style of participatory democracy that is changing the fabric of Venezuelan society? Or are they, as the opposition says, just handouts for Chavez supporters during an election year?
History
The communal councils were modeled after experiences in participatory budgeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and grassroots participatory democracy in Kerala, India. The concept of participatory democracy is not new in Venezuela, and since the election of President Hugo Chavez in 1998, and the subsequent Venezuelan Constitutional Assembly in 1999, the Venezuelan government has been attempting to incorporate more participation in to the decisions of the state.
In 2001, the Local Public Planning Councils (CLPP) were formed across the country with the intent of electing community representatives to work hand in hand with government officials to agree on municipal budgets. Unfortunately, the CLPP were far from successful. In many cases political parties only gave representation to fellow members, and true community control was hard to find when spokespersons, expected to represent hundreds of thousands of people where elected with almost no input from the community.
“They were captured by the mayors, that manipulated the elections,” said former Venezuelan Planning Minister, Felipe Pérez Marti recently. According to Pérez, the CLPPs, which technically still exist, have become further “debilitated” with the creation of the communal councils because the people have decided to try out the newly formed councils, where they feel they actually may have a say. An addendum to the recent Law of Communal Councils additionally gave the newly formed councils power over the CLPPs.
Community Council Law
Although government institutions began to promote the communal councils late last year, the official communal council law was passed in the Venezuelan National Assembly on April 10, 2006. It legally recognized the communal councils and, according to Chapter Five of the Law, established the councils’ right to legally receive and administer resources from government institutions.
Article 2 of the Communal Council Law states:
The communal councils, in the constitutional framework of participatory and protagonistic democracy, are instances of participation, articulation and integration between the diverse community organizations, social groups and the citizens, that permit the organized people to directly exercise the administration (management) of public policies and projects oriented to respond to the necessities and aspirations of the communities in the construction of an equal and socially just society.
The Communal Council Law established that the councils generally be composed of between 200 and 400 families in urban areas, 20 in rural areas, and 10 in indigenous areas, and that final decisions be made by the “citizen’s assembly” or total voting-age residents of the community, which “is the primary instance for the exercising of power.” Anyone over the age of 15 is allowed to participate in the citizen’s assembly, and at least 20% of the voting population must be present in order for a decision to be valid.
The law further called for the election of the local community spokespeople, one from each of the community committees, and five each for the financial and controller branches.
The Communal Council Law essentially put all of the neighborhood committees and community organizing experiences under one umbrella: the communal council. A revolutionary idea and a large task, but not everyone was happy.
Community Reaction
With the passage of the law, many members of Venezuela’s Urban Land Committees (CTUs)—one of the most organized and important instances of community organizing—were put off. They saw the communal councils as an attack against the work they had already been doing in the community. After all, they said, the CTUs are the ones writing community charters and pushing for land titles and housing rights for communities that were never before legally recognized.
CTUs viewed the creation of the communal councils as a government attempt to do something good, while inadvertently causing more harm.[2] Infighting was predicted, as community committees: urban land, health, water, etc. would fight for resources amongst each other that they had previously struggled individually to acquire from the Mayor’s office.
A shift occurred quickly, however, in the months following the passage of the communal council law. The CTUs realized that they would have to join, organize, and promote the communal councils in order to have a say in community decisions. The CTUs now appear to be one of the main pillars of the communal councils, believing that the new proposal is the next step in local democracy.
“The CTU should be one of the fundamental bases of the communal councils. They should not substitute them nor be the councils themselves,” declared CTU activist Hernan Peralta, at the CTU National Meeting earlier this month just outside of Caracas. “They are the crystallization of this project of new construction,” he added.
Although there continues to be discussion, the predictions that community committees would break out in in-fighting does not appear to have materialized on a large-scale.
Participation
“The communal councils are nothing more than a series of tools that are being given to the people for participation,” said Richard Canaan, President of the Venezuelan Institution, FIDES, that has delivered millions of dollars to the communal councils. “One of the most important changes for us is that the Constitution of 1961 was 100% representative. For everything in life, we named representatives. The assembly, representatives of the neighborhood council, and other instances. Now we are driving the active and protagonistic participation of the community. So from representative to protagonistic, where the people are leading the way.”
For many, the communal councils are the latest in a Venezuelan policy under President Chavez to break from business-as-usual representative society, to a working pro-active participatory approach.
This ideology has not been lost on the members of the April 13th communal council. Meetings are held weekly among the spokespersons and in the various committees. At times discussions turn conflictive and they often drag on or wander in typical Venezuelan style, but fortunately council members appear to be willing to listen to one another.
During one evening meeting on September 26, the April 13th council spent the night meticulously debating how they would divvy up work and decision-making to ensure that all decisions made are responsive to the council and the community at-large.
The larger community is involving itself in the council, as proven by the “tremendous” electoral turnout, but it has been slow going.
“The community at the beginning has been apathetic, but changing the way people think is a process,” said Ennys Guerrero, who is a taxi driver and a social comptroller spokesperson of the April 13th Council. Guerrero been living in the community for 44 years and never thought to participate until now.
“Don’t forget that Venezuela lived for 40 years with paternalism,” said FUNDACOMUN (The Foundation for Municipal and Community Development)[3] Capital District of Caracas Director, Pedro Morales, who believes that the lack of community participation has deep-seated roots in Venezuelan tradition of populism and handouts.
“Now we are passing from representative democracy to participatory democracy. We don’t know how long it will take…, but we are trying to push towards this participatory democracy, because it is the community itself that has to participate,” he added.
Afro-Cuban-Venezuelan April 13th council member, Regina Michel Rollock, is very clear that without true community involvement the council isn’t going to get very far.
“We are not going to achieve anything unless we have the participation and protagonism of the community,” says Rollock, who has seen a somewhat disturbing lack of community involvement since the spokesperson elections. “We can have the best ideas, but unless the community realizes what we are doing nothing happens.”
While April 13th council spokespersons organized preparations for the neighborhood’s October 12th Indigenous People’s Day celebrations and arranged a number of neighborhood clean-up days, most members believe that the community will begin to participate more once they see that the council is solving people’s problems. This is one reason why April 13th spokespersons are now working diligently to acquire funds for the repair of the apartment complex.
Presidential Commission & Organization
The National Presidential Commission of Popular Power was formed under article 30 of the Communal Council Law and set up to work on three levels: National, Regional and Municipal, in order to streamline these initiatives and duties of the various institutions. Minister of Participation and Social Development (MINPADES), Jorge Luís García Carneiro presides over the commission, in which FIDES, FUNDACOMUN, BANDES, FONDEMI, the Ministry of Popular Economy (MINEP) and the Ministry of Energy and Petroleum all play distinct but important roles.[4]
FUNDACOMUN works in training and technical assistance for the communal councils, and is also currently the government institution (until the local Presidential Commissions have been formed) where communal councils register their council and receive continued local training and assistance.
FIDES (The Intergovernmental Fund for Decentralization), LAEE (The Law of Special Economic Allotments) and FONDEMI (The Fund for Microfinanced Development) are the primary government institutions in charge of passing resources on to the councils. FIDES, with a billion dollar budget, primarily from sales taxes, now passes 30% of its resources on to the communal councils. FIDES President Richard Canaan declared in mid September that over $436 million dollars had been passed in to the hands of the communal councils for community infrastructure projects.
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