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Venezuela to hold communal elections this weekend
Maduro also agreed to a bill that bans those who ignore court rulings in his favor from participating in the electoral process.
The regime of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro will hold communal elections on Sunday, with the results of the July 28 presidential election contested by about half of the world’s governments. The Brazilian news agency Agencia Brasil explains that the commune is a new form of social organization based on self-management. There are 4,500 communes in the country. The communal council is a kind of permanent popular assembly of the inhabitants of a community or rural area.
Maduro believes the election represents the model of direct participatory democracy that the country wants to build. “Venezuela has its own model of democracy and we are building it. We do not accept imposition, interventionism or anyone getting their hands dirty in our dear, beautiful country. Venezuela has people power,” he insisted on state television on Friday.
Sunday’s election will be the second communal election after the one in April. The government wants to hold such consultations every three months.
In 2010, then-President Hugo Chávez established the communes by law, saying: “The communes should be the spaces where we will nurture socialism in the 21st century.” Some communes have agricultural and industrial production, service industries and even popular banks.
Carla Ferreira, professor of social work at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), explains: “Democracy is being radicalized, with mechanisms that allow the population to directly participate in important decisions, including budgetary ones, which frightens Venezuelan elites, who are historically used to profiting from oil royalties.”
Rodolfo Magallanes, professor at the Institute of Political Studies at the Central University of Venezuela, noted that the consultations are aimed at rebuilding the basic structures that support the “Bolivarian Revolution” project.
Each commune voted on six to seven projects approved by the Commune Assembly. One of the projects will be selected and funded by the government. According to the Ministry of Communal People’s Power, the elections were held in 4,500 communes with a total of 49,000 communal councils, with about 1.5 million people participating.
Meanwhile, the Socialist government is pushing the National Assembly to pass a bill under which anyone who does not comply with a judicial decision, such as one recognizing Maduro as the country’s re-elected president, would be banned from participating in future elections.
“If they want to play the game of democracy, the first thing they have to do is to comply with this sentence (of the TSJ). It is mandatory. Anyone who disregards this sentence should not register as a councillor or register as a candidate for governor and mayor,” stressed Speaker Jorge Rodríguez.
Maduro said he agreed to a bill that “those who disregard the law, public authority and the constitution cannot participate in the electoral process.”
The opposition continues to claim that Edmundo González Urrutia won the July 28 election and that no court ruling can change that fact. “Trying to judicialize the election results does not change the truth,” González Urrutia said.
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