Venezuela Information Office - Venezuelan Election is an Affirmation of Participatory Democracy

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Venezuelan Election is an Affirmation of Participatory Democracy
By Peter Graham Cohn
The Sun-Reporter
December 6, 2007

The Venezuelan Referendum Election on Sunday, December 2, 2007, once again confirms the vitality and validity of the country’s participatory democracy. As I awaited the early morning election results from Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) on Monday, December 3, 2007, the official CNE results were reported on its website and in the local media that the people of Venezuela voted 51% to 49% to not adopt the proposed constitutional reforms that were on the ballot. While the voter turnout of 56% for this election was significantly less than the voter turnout for the 2006 Presidential election which was over 75%, the election results were peacefully accepted by the people of Venezuela.

While the United States governmental leadership and our corporate media have raised questions as to whether there is true democracy in Venezuela, the reality of this election should put to rest any suggestion that the electoral process in Venezuela is not free and fair. This election underscores that democracy is alive and well in Venezuela. The people were invited to vote on reforms affecting 33 of the 350 articles of the 1999 Constitution. The purposes of the reforms were generally described by President Hugo Chavez and the government as the following: 1) to speed the redistribution of Venezuela’s resources to benefit the poor; 2) to de-centralize political power to grant citizens more direct say in their affairs; and 3) to move Venezuela towards a new more equitable model of development – known as “Socialism for the 21st Century” – in peace and democracy.

The reforms more specifically included: a) politics - extending the presidential term to seven years and permitting any sitting president to seek consecutive terms still subject to face reelection and recall referenda; b) economy - expanding economic reforms affecting growth, diversification and business and entrepreneurial opportunities as well as formalizing an economic model centered on social welfare and a diverse range of enterprises; c) mandating that the Central Bank and the executive, through the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Planning and Development, more closely coordinate efforts to implement policies that promote economic growth and development; d) property – expanding the definition of property to include: public, social, collective, mixed and private; e) military – expanding the branches of the Venezuelan armed services to include: the Army, Navy, Air Force, Territorial Guard and the Popular Militia which was formerly the National Reserves; f) territorial reforms – further expanding political-territorial boundaries including states, municipalities, a federal district, federal territories and federal dependencies to be complemented by maritime regions, insular districts and cities; and, this latter reform would allow for targeting of certain areas that suffer from a lack of development and infrastructure to have governmental resources more easily directed to them.

The reforms were supported by President Chavez as well as the National Assembly after three rounds of public debate. The election was overseen by the National Electoral Council along with volunteers representing various segments of the society as has been the case in some 12 national elections since 1998. There were also international observers including the NAACP and the National Lawyers Guild who traveled to Venezuela to observe the election process. The very fact that the position supported by the government did not carry the day in the election speaks volumes about the openness and fairness of the election, the accuracy of the results, and the level of respect for the sovereign will of the people.

For this election as well as all those elections since 1998, Venezuela should be congratulated for so actively engaging in citizen consultation regarding the future of its governance and constitution. This election also affords the United States government an opportunity to engage in positive and constructive diplomacy with an important Latin American partner in this hemisphere. Rather than continuing conflict and strife, there is a current diplomatic opportunity – that should be seized -- to positively affirm the democratic process of Venezuela, to acknowledge its nationwide and common electoral technology that permits every voter to vote on a computer, and to have a paper ballot generated so that the voter can check the accuracy of his or her ballot before it is placed in the ballot box. Unlike the great challenges that the United States has experienced with the close elections of 2000 and 2004, Venezuela was able to verify and accurately report on its election results by the early hours of the morning following the election. This is a laudatory election result that should be more than welcomed in the United States and any other country that values democracy.

Attorney Cohn serves on the International Affairs and Legal Committees of the NAACP’s National Board of Directors and is counsel for the San Francisco Branch of the NAACP.