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Courtesy translation
The Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,
overwhelmingly approved by national referendum in December,
1999, reflected President Hugo Chavez's vision of a new
Project of Nation, establishing the foundation and legal
framework for a humanistic participatory social democracy,
nourished by the daily action of the people.
The Bolivarian Constitution includes political rights so
that all members of the society can participate in political
decisions; social rights that guarantee access to education,
health, housing, and cultural rights to protect, enhance and
restore the spiritual heritage and the historic memory of
the Nation.
Notwithstanding the revolutionary contributions of the
Bolivarian Constitution, among which, several types of
referenda, popular consultation, the recall of any elective
post, as well as the President, at half of their term, the
proposal presented to the National Assembly on August 15th,
2007 by President Hugo Chávez to reform 33 articles (10% of
the 1999 Constitution), seeks to deepen the process of
revolutionary transformation.
Currently, the National Assembly is widely debating the text
in three extraordinary sessions. A massive information
campaign has been deployed to propitiate a vast discussion
in all areas of the society, in what has been called “street
parliaments”, including consultations of interest groups
(workers, students, businesses, farmers, indigenous peoples,
and professionals). Likewise, community round-tables for
deliberation are organized throughout the territory to
guarantee popular participation in the process of
constitutional reform and their sovereign expression in the
referendum to be held in December, 2007.
Some of the main concepts proposed are:
a new “Geometry of Power”; the creation of the “Popular
Power” with constitutional rank and its own budget, as an
autonomous entity to restitute to the people the control
over decisions that the representative democracy does not
guarantee; the recognition of different kinds of property
defined as social, collective, mixed and private; the
inclusion of the Social Missions in the Constitution, and a
Social Stability Fund to guarantee no-dependent workers
fundamental rights, such as pensions, vacations, pre and
post-natal rights, and others established by law; ending the
autonomy of Venezuela's Central Bank; guaranteeing state
control over the nation's oil industry to prevent any future
privatization of this vital resource; redefinition of the
role of the military.
TERRITORY AND GEOGRAPHIC SPACE /THE NEW GEOMETRY OF POWER.
Article 11:
The new “Geometry of Power”, one of the five motors of the
revolution, proposes to create territorial awareness, in
which the full sovereignty of the Republic is exercised, and
which includes the states, federal territories, federal
municipalities, and insular districts, as well as a new
figure called maritime regions to develop and organize the
vast Venezuelan territorial sea and its exclusive economic
zone. Another key aspect of the new Geometry of Power would
be the ability of the President to declare special military
zones in any part of the country with the strategic aim of
defense, and decree special authorities in situations of
contingency such as natural disasters.
Article 16.
The reform proposes to reconstitute Caracas´ fragmented
urban space, creating the Federal District where the Capital
city is located. The primary territorial unit is
constituted around the city, a settlement integrated by
communes and communities. The proposal also allows
municipalities to create a common territory that would be
directly ruled by the community and would constitute the
basic nucleus of the socialist state.
POPULAR POWER
/ SUFFRAGE AND PARTICIPATION
Article 70.
In addition to the previously existing “public powers”
recognized in the 1999 Constitution (Legislative, Executive,
Judicial, Citizen and Electoral), the reform calls for the
“Popular Power” to be incorporated into Article 70, to
decentralize and transfer power to the organized communities
to create the best conditions for socialist democracy.
Since the protagonism of the grassroots is the root of the
process, the reform opens the means of participation for the
people in direct exercise of their sovereignty, through
elections to public positions, referenda, popular
consultation, recall of elected officials (including the
president), constitutional legislative initiatives, and open
assemblies. Popular power would be expressed through the
organized communities, in various forms such as the
communes, self-government of the towns and cities, the
communal councils, workers councils, farmer councils,
student councils, and others councils indicated in the
law.
One of the central modifications seeks to open the roads to
accelerate the transfer of power to the people in an
“Explosion of Communal (or popular) Power”. There are
already more than 26,000 democratically functioning
grassroots communal councils, government-sanctioned and
funded, operating throughout the country, developing the
values of mutual cooperation and socialist solidarity.
Article 203
would allow for continued re-elections of Heads of
Government currently admitted in many countries around the
world, such as England, France, Germany and others. The
proposal also extends presidential terms from six to seven
years.
SOCIAL, CULTURAL AND LABOUR RIGHTS.
Article 87
The reform provides to protect the participative people
incorporating the social security to no-dependent workers,
such as taxi drivers, artisans, fishermen, freelance
professionals, among others, through a Social Stability Fund
to guarantee them the same fundamental rights as other
workers such as retirement pensions, paid vacations and
prenatal and postnatal leave entitlements.
Article 90
proposes a definite improvement of the quality of life
reducing the workday from eight hours to six daily or 34
hours weekly to allow workers to have sufficient time for
integral and moral development of their personality, for
participation, education, spiritual and recreational
pursuits.
Article 100
recognizes Venezuela as a product of a diverse historical
confluence of cultures and recommends the implementation of
programmes to promote equality for indigenous peoples and
peoples of African descent.
ECONOMIC MODEL
Article 112.
The reform proposes a productive, intermediate, diversified
and independent Economic Model, founded on humanist values
of cooperation and the preponderance of common interests
over individual ones, that guarantees the satisfaction of
social and material needs of the people, the greater sum of
political and social stability and the greater sum of
happiness possible. The Republic will foster and develop
several forms of enterprises and economic units of social
property, direct or communal and indirect or state managed,
as well as enterprises and economic units of production
and/or social distribution, that can be a mixed property
between the State and the private sector and the communal
power, creating the best conditions for the collective
construction and cooperative of a Socialist Economy.
Article 113
categorically prohibits monopolies, and establishes that the
State may reserve for itself the exploitation of natural
resources or any other commodity of strategic character or
vital public services, directly or through enterprises of
direct, mixed social property or units of socialist
production. The State may grant concession for a determined
period of time on commodities of the nation and public
services, requiring regulating norms.
Article 141
grants constitutional rank to one of the key instruments in
the Bolivarian revolutionary process, the Social Missions,
recognized as organizations of diverse nature to assist the
most urgent and sensitive needs of the population, requiring
exceptional, even experimental systems, to be ruled and
organized by regulations.
Article 156.
The numeral 13 of Article 156 confirms that the fiscal
matter is a national legal reserve and cannot be ascribed by
any state law or regulation; thus eliminating the anarchy,
that divided the Republic in 22 antagonic fiscal systems.
Likewise, the numeral 22 assigns to the National Power the
macroeconomic, finance and fiscal policies of the Republic,
as well as the fiscal control, which allows to restructure
state controls.
Artículo 184.
The local administration will be integrated with the
constitutionally acknowledged Popular Power. A national law
will create mechanisms for the National Power; the states
decentralize and transfer the services to the organized
communities, the communal councils, and other institutions
of the Popular Power. Clear, organic rules should rule this
indispensable cooperation.
Article 302
guarantees state control over the oil industry, closing off
any potential loophole that would allow privatization of
this resource; “The State reserves, for reasons of
sovereignty, development and the national interest, the
activity of exploitation of liquid, solid, and gaseous
hydrocarbons as well as the exploitation of goods and
services of public interest and strategic character.”
Article 305.
The political control of the land is sovereignty; its social
control, socialism. Article 305 ascribes the State the
competence to take on sectors of the agricultural livestock
or aquatic production, and to procure food self-sufficiency
as a priority matter.
Article 307
categorically forbids the existence of large estates and
orders the transference of large estates and non-productive
land to institutions or public enterprises of social
property. Likewise, it recognizes the private property of
farmers and other agro-producers. It defines the State as
promoter of the social property of the land, and orders the
creation of taxes on non-productive land. This article also
widens the categories for the confiscation of farms, whose
owners exercise irreparable actions of environmental
destruction; those involved in drug- trafficking, or traffic
of persons, or any land used in criminal activities against
the security and defense of the nation.
Articles 318 and 321.
Other key changes in the economic sphere include the removal
of autonomy for the Central Bank of Venezuela, which
specific objective is, together with the National Executive,
to achieve price stability and preserve the internal and
external value of the monetary unit. The national monetary
system must seek the achievement of the essential goals of
the Socialist State and the Welfare of the people over any
other consideration. The proposal includes the elimination
of the Macroeconomic Stabilization Fund, which guaranteed
the stability of the expenditure of the States before the
fluctuations of the ordinary income. The proposal
establishes that the Head of State in coordination with the
Central Bank of Venezuela will determine the level of the
necessary reserves for the national economy, as well as the
amount of the excess reserves, which will be oriented to
funds for productive investment, development and
infrastructure, financing the missions, the endogenous,
integral, humanist and socialist development of the nation.
PUBLIC, SOCIAL, COLLECTIVE AND PRIVATE PROPERTY
Article 115.
A new Socialism of the XXI Century requires new forms of
property. The proposal in its Article 115 recognizes: 1)
The public property, which belongs to the institutions
of the State; 2) the social property, which belongs
to the people as a whole and to the future generations,
which could be: indirect, exercised by the State on
behalf of the community, or direct, which is
communal, when the State assigns it to communities,
communes, or citizen, when it is assigned to cities,
3) collective, pertaining to social groups or
persons, for their use, common enjoyment, and it could be
of social origin or of private origin; 4) mixed property,
conformed between the public sector, the social sector,
the collective sector and the private sector, in different
combinations for the use of resources or execution of
activities, always subject to the absolute respect to the
economic and social sovereignty of the nation; and 5)
private property, belonging to natural or judicial
persons and that is recognized on goods for use, for
consumption and legitimately acquired means of production.
THE ROLE OF THE ARMED FORCE
Article 328.
The proposal demands a redefinition of the role of the
military through the modification of article 328 of the
reform that omits the apolitical character of the Bolivarian
Armed Force; it explains its patriotic, popular and
anti-imperialist character. It ascribes its participation
in resistance popular war, the maintenance of the citizen
security, and its active participation in programmes of
economic, social, scientific and technological development
of the nation, and it forbids it to be at the service of the
oligarchy and the foreign imperial power.
Article 329
The amendment of article 329 proposes to transform the
Reserves into the Bolivarian Militia constituted as the
fifth official component of the Bolivarian Armed Forces,
alongside the Bolivarian Army, the Bolivarian Navy, the
Bolivarian Air Force, and the Bolivarian National Guard. The
said bodies would be structured in combined garrison units,
combined training units and combined units for joint
operations, signifying the “fusion” of the Armed Forces.
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