Another from Tal Cual: Andrés Cañizález discusses in rather sobering terms what the past month in Venezuela has shown us about the role of information in a democracy:
We said that this August has been a clear example of a return to the model of yesteryear. Not only is it that all laws passed by the National Assembly are in themselves a huge setback when compared with what is written in the constitution, which in itself is very serious; but equally or more disturbing than what has been written in the new legislation is the manner in which it was reached. That is, we have a problem with the new laws, as much for their content as well as for their form.
At the heart of this debate is the role of information as an essential tool for democracy. The Bolivarian Constitution echoes this principle, already universally accepted, and for that reason a host of mechanisms are provided in its pages to inform citizens of the legislative discussions, starting with the notion that information is the first step in the participatory process when it is genuinely established.
With laws passed at midnight, with texts that not even the legislators themselves knew in advance, turning them into mere puppets who raise their hands when the puppet master pulls the string, one would be hard pressed to call this participatory democracy, or something that meets the requirements of a model of representative democracy
Again we are in the presence of a model resembling pre-1999 that so many of us question, in which a small group of Venezuelans are making decisions of supreme importance to national life, and do so with their backs to the public, without consult beforehand with the people what they think about legislation bills, without opening the information channels as provided in the charter of 1999.
This model, which denies information from the public, was not always the way it was, neither in the past nor in the present for Venezuela. It symbolizes, without doubt, the weakness of those in power. This power structure from yesteryear, which could be called rotten, is most palpable when waning popular preference for such political parties as AD and COPEI was most obvious.
Obviously several decades passed before the public's distaste came alive and for the simultaneous secretive model to take shape and achieve the power it did, whose own errors ultimately led to the destruction of the system in place since 1958.
The 1999 model has within a decade gone through a process of attrition that points to a repeat of the secretist model of before, with decisions inside the legislature, without public consultation, no information in people's hands. The logic of Chavismo today, to the contrary, seeks to establish greater controls on basic freedoms (to inform oneself, to protest) without leading to massive repression.
The denial of information at different levels of society is not simply the symbol of Chavismo's weakness. Recovering space for the free exercise of rights associated to information is a priority in the struggle for democracy which we are debating right now.
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