Tailor-made

Tailor-made
ARMANDO CHAGUACEDA | Ciudad de México | 12 de Mayo de 2017 - 11:36 CEST.

That the Government of Cuba supports Venezuela's is common knowledge.
Their intelligence apparatuses turn opposition activism into persecuted
dissidence.

Their control and propaganda cover up the Venezuelan political and
humanitarian crisis, as messages are broadcast via Telesur.

Today's ailing basic services - with which Chávez made a comeback from
his unpopularity in 2002 - once sufficed to ensure neighborhood
clientelism. In the practical dimension of politics today, however, Cuba
is now a decisive factor for the maintenance of a regime that currently
enjoys less than 20% of the population's support.

Where the archetype has been most problematic and veiled is the model
character of Cuban institutional design, as a desirable paradigm for el
chavismo. Although its organization and leadership always harbored
authoritarian impulses, its social heterogeneity, ideological
eclecticism, and the electoral context of Chavez's rise to power
prevented his project from pursuing an autocratic Constitution.

The Constitution of 1999 actually combined a respect for civil and
political rights with a liberal matrix and institutions of
representative democracy (parties, tripartition of powers), and expanded
participation (at the community and the plebiscitary levels), social
inclusion, and human rights in an innovative and generous way.

It was post-liberal, not anti-liberal, and included mechanisms that
allowed the sovereign party - the real, diverse and dynamic people - to
support some proposals by the Executive (presidential recall of 2004,
introduction of reelection in 2009) and to reject others (constitutional
reform of 2007) – always via universal, free and secret votes. That's
why when Maduro, deprived of support, convokes an ad hoc, popular
Constituent Assembly, it's a ploy. His "people" are a minority faction
that ought to be subject to the political control and ideological
loyalty of the country's citizens. Though their numbers, and their
allegiance, are waning, he intends to use them, through a corporate
scheme and vertical designation, to overturn the current Constitution.
In this way, typically illicit Caribbean political winds are blowing.

The enactment of the Cuban Constitution was the antithesis of democracy
and republicanism. It was written by a 20-member body, designated by
high-ranking State and Party leadership, from which it received specific
instructions as to its basic contents and principles. Unlike its liberal
(1901) and social (1940) predecessors, the Stalinist Constitution of
1976did not emanate from an elected and convened assembly. Its
preliminary draft was approved at the First Congress of the
(unchallenged) Communist Party. Popular deliberation in the "constituent
process" was directed centrally, following pre-established guidelines.
There was no possibility of real social and political diversity being
recognized, or any opportunity for the horizontal communication of
ideas, or contrasting points of view with regards to the official
proposal. Participation was fragmented, with few chances to control the
agenda.

That Constitution has since been revised twice (1992 and 2002), but
always in accordance with the regime's designs. The Cuban National
Assembly is a "parliament" that does not deliberate or legislate, meets
little, and votes unanimously. Like its counterparts ​​in the Soviet
world, the Constitution, theoretically, grants the legislature primacy,
but real power resides in the Councils of State and Ministers, and,
above all, at the highest levels of the Party. Maduro wants to take
things in this direction by suppressing, de jure and de facto, political
plurality, debate and autonomy, including those of his allies. For this
he has brought, from Havana and with certain Mussolinian embroideries, a
suit that has been tailor-made.

This article originally appeared in the Mexican newspaper La Razón. It
is published and translated here with the author's permission.

Source: Tailor-made | Diario de Cuba -
http://www.diariodecuba.com/internacional/1494581806_31063.html