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Participation as an Essential Element of an Active Civil Society
“Communal councils are, above all, private associations
that group the members of a community. When we say
they are private associations, we mean to highlight that
the communal councils are not part of the state, nor are
they state entities. Communal councils are associations
created by citizens to interact with the state, making use
of their right to political participation. This is why they
are autonomous associations that cannot be ruled nor led
by the state. To the contrary, they must be oriented by
the independent will of the members of the community,
expressed through the citizens’ assembly.”
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The great handicap of the communal model is that it has always
been tied to the figure of the president, making it a dependent of
the central government of Venezuela. Manuel Rachadell denounced
the dependence of communal councils on the President, and its total
disassociation from municipal government entities, which they seek to
substitute. This reconfirms that we are beholding a new centralism,
adopted under the guise of decentralization, because it consists of
bestowing decision-making powers to bodies that depend, ultimately,
on the leadership of the executive branch.
22
In this sense, wemust note that despite the difficulties in the formulation
of this social organization, and aside from the official partisan interests
in controlling the new structures and the exaggerated centralism, an
intermediate stability was reached, which fostered the organizational
consciousness of communities toward the development of participatory
processes.
Many legal and social research studies demonstrate that the new law
of communal councils is unconstitutional. The non-governmental
organization, Venezuelan Education Program – Action on Human
Rights, highlighted in its annual report dated October 2009 through
September 2010, that the new legislation established an excluding
and discriminatory disposition that threatens plurality, freedom of
organization and resources that communities might want to have.
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