Amid the disputed re-election of President Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela is holding the 2nd National Popular Consultation of 2024 in the country’s 4,500 communes this Sunday (23). In Venezuela, communes are new forms of social organization based on self-management carried out by communal councils, a type of permanent popular assembly where residents of a neighborhood or rural area meet.
Maduro has argued that this election represents the model of direct and participatory democracy that the country wants to build. “Venezuela has its own model of democracy, and we are building it. We do not accept impositions, interventionism, or anyone who puts their dirty hands in our beloved and beautiful country. Venezuela has People’s Power,” he said in a television program on state TV.
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro visited the Los Tacarigua Sur Commune, located in the state of Carabobo, to inspect the construction of the Los Cocos canal retaining wall, one of the priority projects that was approved in the first communal election. Photo: Ministry of Popular Power for Communes and Social Movements/Disclosure
Over the past week, Maduro and other government leaders have visited communes in several states to publicize the election. This is the second election of its kind that the country has held, the first being in April of this year. The government expects consultations like these to take place every three months.
Created by law in 2010, then-president Hugo Chávez stated that “communes must be the space where we will give birth to 21st century socialism.” With different models, there are communes with agro-industrial production, services or even popular banks.
This Sunday’s election is similar to the Participatory Budget in Brazil, when the population chooses between different projects in which the government should invest in a given community, which could be anything from a sports court, a community center or a water pumping station.
Carla Ferreira, a professor of Social Work at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), who wrote her doctoral thesis on the Bolivarian process in Venezuela, highlighted that the popular consultation is part of a process of direct participation that has been built in the country over the last 20 years.
“There is a process of radicalization of democracy, with several mechanisms of direct popular participation in important decisions, including budgetary ones, which is the horror of the Venezuelan elite historically accustomed to enriching itself with oil royalties,” he explained.
Professor Rodolfo Magallanes, from the Institute of Political Studies at the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), highlighted that this consultation seeks to reconstitute the base structures that support the “Bolivarian Revolution” project.
“I understand that this has to do with the reconstitution of the structure, let’s say, of the bases that support the government. I don’t expect there to be much popular mobilization, but I understand that this could be a way of reconstructing the party bases, the grassroots structures that are closer to the communities,” he explained.
Communal Union
Each commune approved, through communal assemblies, between six and seven projects to be voted on. One of these will be chosen and financed by the government. According to the Ministry of People’s Power for Communes, elections will take place in 4,500 communes, which group together 49,000 communal councils with the participation of approximately 1.5 million people.
The Communal Union, an organization that brings together Venezuela’s communes, celebrated the 2nd Popular Consultation of the organizations. “Freedom is having the power to decide how and when to bring improvements to your community, and this can only be achieved through popular power and the revolutionary government of Nicolás Maduro, a legacy of Comandante Chávez,” the organization stated.
Democracy
The popular consultation aimed at projects in Venezuelan communes takes place amid protests from the opposition and countries – such as the United States and the European Union – against the reelection of Nicolas Maduro, as proclaimed by the National Electoral Council (CNE) and ratified by the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ). However, the data for each polling station has not yet been presented.
The opposition claims that it has the records that show the victory of the opposition candidate Edmundo González. The country’s Public Prosecutor’s Office has opened an investigation against those responsible for publishing the alleged opposition records on the internet, accusing them of document forgery, usurpation of powers of the Electoral Power and “conspiracy”.
