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Building popular power through communal councils
by Federico Fuentes
The election of Hugo Chavez to the presidency of Venezuela in 1998 signalled the end of the old, corrupt representative democracy of the “Fourth Republic”, in which the two major parties — each representing the interests of the rich elites — shared power between themselves, while the poor 80% were excluded. From its ashes rose the Fifth Republic based on the idea of active and participatory democracy, which was enshrined in the new constitution. The aim was not only that the poor were to be given access to health, education and basic services, but they would play an active role in deciding how these areas would function.
There was a rise in health committees, local neighbourhood groups, Urban Land Committees and many more forms of community organisation that sprang up. While these organisations continue to exist, many of the participants have encountered problems, including difficulties working with some of the bureaucratic structures inherited from the Fourth Republic. Many people from the old structures have continued to work in the administrations, hindering the work of the community.
Some state institutions worked in a counterproductive way in the establishment of these community organisations, with party politics influencing who received funds or was given official recognition. Also, the explosion in community organisation meant that in any one community, multiple organisations are found, each working away on their own projects, sometimes competing for resources and weakening their ability to tackle problems.
There is also a problem with old practices and cultures that still dominate within the communities. For decades, people have been fed the idea that Venezuela’s problems can be solved simply by distributing petrodollars, leading a number of people to hand over a project to an institution and wait for it to be done.
To help overcome these problems, revolutionary activists, some of whom are active in Chavez’s party, the Movement for the Fifth Republic, others in the Bolivarian Circles, began to work on the idea of community governments in the municipality of Sucre. One of these revolutionaries, Freddy Gil, who now works in the office of the mayor of Sucre, spoke to
Green Left Weekly about this project, which the Ministry of Popular Participation and Social Development (MINPADES) hopes to extend around the country.
The idea was that, on a scale small enough for people to directly exercise power, to bring all the people and different organisations present in the community together to work out a single plan for their community, tackling issues from public works to health and education.
What is important, Gil said, is that the project of building the new society is starting from the grassroots upwards. To set up a communal council, an assembly is called by convoking 200 to 400 families in a local community.
“Once it is determined that in this area it is possible to form a community government then we would go with an invitation calling on all of the community, taken to each house independent of their political ideas. At the assembly, they would be asked to choose 20 people to form the promotion team for the community government, made up of those who put themselves forward at the assemblies.”
I went to one meeting with 50 people, representing the same amount of families. Twenty people stepped forward as social promoters, the majority of them women. Because of the proximity of the communal councils to family homes, the participation of women is made easier, and women tend to play the biggest role.
The promotion teams are entrusted with the job of carrying out a census of the population to find out exactly who lives in the area and what their specific problems are, and to notify them of coming elections for the council. Thirteen members of the communal council will be elected, each with a designated role such as education, culture, science and technology, or citizen and community security.
Gil explained that this process helps ensure the full participation of the community, and that no party or organisation could self declare itself a communal council without the knowledge of the community. In the rush by some mayors and councillors to prove their credentials in establishing the most communal councils in their respective areas, this aspect has been neglected.
For radical Latin American journalist Marta Harnecker, who is working with MINPADES on the promotion of the communal councils, broad participation in this project is very important for the revolution. She explained to
Green Left Weekly that “participation will help consolidate this process at the grassroots, and broaden it, creating more forces in favour of the process”.
By broadening participation, many people who may not yet support the revolution due to the “politicking and the defects of the process ... could be won to the construction of a new humanist society”. “There are many people who are not Chavistas but would help construct this new society. It needs to be opened up to all those people.”
Harnecker argues it would be a “grave mistake to politicise participation. Participation itself can politicise people, for instance in the case of the participatory budget in Porto Alegre [in Brazil] where people from other parties were involved, but who began to sympathise with the Worker’s Party after they participated in a process that wasn’t politicised. I believe that is the road to win people over to this project.”
The next stage involves the community discussing the problems they face and how to tackle them. Harnecker explained: “It is important to first look at prioritising problems that the community can resolve itself. There is a habit of people who organise themselves to propose a project in order to get money. They are able to formulate a project, but then they are left waiting for the money ... they are left with their arms crossed waiting for a response, and because the response is slow, if it comes at all, that is where apathy will appear.
“Instead, if you organise yourself to see what the community can resolve, it can be much more successful, because they can resolve many things with the resources they have in the community.”
That is why citizens’ assemblies are given the clear role of decision making, while the communal councils are meant to work on executing the projects the community has decided on, involving the community in carrying out and supervising the jobs.
Gil explained, “The country has economically advanced, but the social debt here is so big that many of the problems won’t be fixed in a budget … we need to work in the communities to help create cooperatives and the nucleus of endogenous [national] development that can allow employment and enable things to occur. This will come about as we learn more about the latent potential in each community.”
Discussing, debating, executing and supervising projects that tackle the entirety of the problems faced at the local level would give the communities real power. Not all problems would be able to be fixed in the first round, and some projects of a bigger nature would need to be taken to higher authorities, but with a solid organisational base the communities could make sure that more and more power would reside there, rather than in the old structures.
Gil commented that for him the communal councils “are a school where people learn and take up the idea that they can socialise their potential, learning what we would need for a bigger system ... If we all learn in this collective exercise about the socialisation of things, of course we are going to advance further in socialisation [on a larger scale].
“When some of us ‘revolutionaries’ reach [positions in government], we begin to work a lot like the Fourth Republic. So when the people learn about their rights and put forward projects to tackle their necessities, taking them through the regular channels and demanding respect, the governors, mayors ... will begin disappearing. We know that, accustomed to old vices, they will try to escape, but they will find themselves confronted with the people.
“Here, anyone who wants to be governor or mayor to serve the public will need to really serve the public ... they will not be able to give out resources to where they want to benefit their votes. With the article in the constitution that refers to referendums [to recall elected officials], if the governor doesn’t get to work, well, how easy is it for the organised community to collect signatures ... This will be a very important mechanism of control.”
“We used to talk about socialism”, said Gil, “of taking power from the enemy through arms, but where the people did not exercise anything. Today we have political power, we have a president that calls for a debate on ‘socialism of the 21st century’, and we have a whole community debating, discussing and experimenting.”
From Green Left Weekly, November 2, 2005.
