The questionable figure of the protectors is also one of the threats to the process.
This Sunday the elections of governors and mayors are taking place in Venezuela. Unlike the previous ones, this time the main opposition parties have decided to participate while international observers are present to verify the legitimacy of the process.
This day, Venezuelans are called to vote to elect 23 governors, 335 mayors, 253 legislators to the legislative councils and 2,471 councilors.
In recent years, the opposition had maintained a strategy of absenteeism, which has not yielded results, and some parties have decided, after some conversations and concessions from the Nicolás Maduro regime, to participate again to see if they can change the negative panorama in something. that the country is experiencing due to the crisis, which has caused the emigration of five million Venezuelans.
Now the main challenge for the detractors of the Government of Nicolás Maduro is to seduce a majority tired citizenry who, according to the polls, want a change in the country.
The firm Datanálisis has projected a 45% participation and anticipates that the majority of the governorates would remain in the hands of Chavismo.
The opposition would win between four and six governorships, much less than Chavismo, but more space would be given to opposition politicians in general. Now, experts have said that, if more than 60% vote, the options that the opposition give surprises and remain with eight or nine governorships would be the most favorable scenario for the opposition, but it is somewhat difficult.
Also, analysts have said that it should be seen, in the states in which the opposition loses, with how much it loses and who is in second place, since that politician should be the voice against the ruling party in that place, and also it will be possible to see what option of the opposition represents.
Parallel system that threatens any result
Maduro’s promise to eliminate, after regional and local elections, the parallel entity in states ruled by opponents, which he himself has called “protector”, is in question due to the Communal Cities Law project, which contemplates granting mayors powers commune leaders.
The commitment was acquired on June 28 by the president, who has appointed at his disposal the “protectors”, authorities parallel to those chosen through elections to govern states and municipalities and that the Executive appoints in a discretionary manner, he recalls EFE.
The provisions have been applied in various entities where the authorities are in opposition, such as the case of the states of Mérida or Táchira, which have been affected, according to their legally elected governors, due to the lack of support from the central Administration, which grants responsibilities and budgets to the “protectors.”
The figure of the “protectorate” is not contemplated in the Constitution.
As he told EFE the lawyer and professor of Constitutional Political Theory Gustavo Manzo, there is no legal or legal basis to support the appointment of this figure.
Article 4 of the Magna Carta establishes that Venezuela is a “decentralized Federal State”, while Article 5 indicates that sovereignty resides “non-transferable” in the people, who exercise it, indirectly, through suffrage.
In this sense, Manzo argued that the appointment of these so-called “protectors” is an element of “authoritarianism.”
“When the Maduro Administration fails to win through elections (…) or when it requires, in some way, to exercise power, there they will appoint a protector,” said Manzo, who recalled that this figure also She was recently appointed to the main university in Venezuela, directed by an academic critical of the Government.
Last September, Maduro hesitated over the decision to eliminate the so-called “protectors”, stating that he was “sorry” because, in his opinion, the opposition governors are absent; but finally he said that the measure would be maintained because he had committed to it.
Guarantees of promise?
The promise, however, does not appear to be a guarantee that the autonomy of elected regional and local institutions will be respected, regardless of what the result is on Sunday, since the Communal Cities Bill, which would be applied in a similar way to the protectorates, but in this case, in mayoralties, it has been under discussion for months.
The legislation, according to experts and more than one hundred Venezuelan Oenegés who reject it, seeks to change the political-territorial distribution of Venezuela by granting power and functions of governors or mayors to those who rule these “cities”.
“It really raises a new way of seeing, of Venezuelan political, territorial and economic organization; the way the money is distributed, the powers; the way the budget is distributed, how it is spent ”, explained Manzo.
Article 5 of the legislation under discussion indicates that the “fundamental” purpose of the Communal City is the “full development of participatory, leading democracy” for the “formation and exercise of the Government by the communes.”
And he explains that the way to achieve this exercise of Government is through “the administration and management of the competences developed or transferred to it, the establishment of norms of coexistence and socialization, and territorial legislative mechanisms and social control for transit towards socialist society ”.
But, in addition, in 56 it is indicated that the entities of the State and “territorial political entities” should “promote the transfer process (…) to the communes of the Communal Cities”, the “management and administration of services, activities , goods and resources ”.
The law is part of the so-called Plan de la Patria de Maduro project, who defends that his way of governing is by granting power to the people, although scholars of the matter see in these projects promoted by the ruling party a way to extend or centralize power. of the agent.
So, in Manzo’s opinion, the November 21 elections can be a “way to make up” or “nuance” the political scene, because what the ruling Chavismo seeks is to transform Venezuela into a socialist state, a This idea dates back to 2007, when the late President Hugo Chávez promoted a constitutional reform that was rejected in a referendum. (I)
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