Venezuela is not having a coup, but who cares, because it already had a coup

What little was left of Venezuelan democracy died when the Supreme Tribunal usurped legislative authority back in March, even if it later reversed parts of its decision. 

But the Maduro regime keeps insulting what remains of democracy in Venezuela. On May Day, President Maduro called for a convention to write a new constitution. He did not do that because the current one grants him insufficient power. Partisan control of a supreme court unbound by any norms has shown that the existing document basically lets him do whatever he wants to do. 

Rather, the reasons are subtler. I will get to them at the end. But first, is his call itself unconstitutional?

One response might be, who cares? The government does not consider itself bound by the constitutional anymore. That said, the government runs a risk in violating the Magna Carta too blatantly. So the question is worth asking. After all, many have claimed that Article 347 of the current constitution bans the President from calling for such a convention. (Here is an English version of the constitution.) 

For what it is worth, President Maduro is acting within his powers, as unreasonable as it may be to grant the President the unilateral power to call a constitutional convention.

Here are articles 347 and 348: 

Article 347: The original constituent power rests with the people of Venezuela. This power may be exercised by calling a National Constituent Assembly for the purpose of transforming the state, creating a new juridical order and drawing up a new Constitution.

Article 348: The initiative for calling a National Constituent Assembly may emanate from the President of the Republic sitting with the Cabinet of Ministers; from the National Assembly, by a two-thirds vote of its members; from the Municipal Councils in open session, by a two-thirds vote of their members; or from 15% of the voters registered with the Civil and Electoral Registry.

Most observers are yelling about Article 347, claiming that Maduro needs a referendum to call a constitutional convention. But that is not what the article says. What the article says is that the people will have to elect a constitutional convention. Article 348 pretty clearly gives him the power to call one whenever he wants. (Weirdly, the version of the Bolivarian constitution on the Georgetown website changes the “or” in Article 348 to an “and,” which would in fact make it much harder to call a convention. But I assume that Hugo Chávez knew what he was doing when he wrote the thing back in 1999.

But don’t worry. Maduro still may manage to violate Article 347 in his decree. (Text of the decree is here.) Consider the second article of the decree calling for the convention:

Article 2: The members of the National Constituent Assembly will be elected on a sectoral and territorial basis, under the supervision of the National Electoral Council and by universal, direct and secret suffrage.

We have as yet no idea what he means by “sectoral and territorial.” But the indications are that representation will be rather less than proportional. The link, from the Ministry of Information, says that half the representatives will be elected “from the working class, the missions, the peasants, the social movements.” In addition, “the elderly, the youth, the workers, the indigenous, and others will have a directly selected representative.”

That sounds like a lot less than one person-one vote. And then there are the territorial representatives. Presumably the districts will be of equal size, but who the hell knows?

Anyway, it does not matter. Maduro will say that whatever system he chooses does not violate Article 347, since the wording is vague and who is anyone to say how the power of the people is to be exercised? 

Which brings us back to the question of what it is that Maduro intends to accomplish. Well, it seems pretty clear:

1. Divide the opposition by luring parts into negotiations about irrelevant issues;
2. Call elections under rules that might allow the Socialist Party to win without blatant fraud;
3. Use the new constitution to retroactively legitimize the games of the past few months, which is what Chávez managed to do back in 1999.

The risk? Well, Francisco Toro called it: each step of the process will provide a focal point for the opposition. Each one could get violent and snowball into mass revolt. 

The stakes keep getting higher. I was wrong in 2013. To my partial credit, I began to see disaster coming by February 2014, but I was still wrong four years ago. Civil unrest is here and explosive violence is starting to seem inevitable. 

I wish I had been right. Is there any chance that the constitutional hail Mary can avoid a confrontation? 

Comments

[shah8]

My attitude is mostly a weary pissed-offness. I don't really care about whether Maduro survives, and I have an abiding contempt for the opposition. To me, Venezuela is part of a longer, slow running crisis of low demand in the third world. It's just at and past crisis point due to its geopolitical isolation, but too many places are quite too close to the edge--it's sort of hard not to look at the triad of Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia as vulnerable to the same sort of issues, no matter that they are wealthier and have access to more wealth in the rest of the world. Racial/ethnic issues drive poltical and economic paralysis until things blow up.

As for Venezuela itself, I'm not inclined to believe any loosening of Chavista rule until that actually happens, because I think that fundamentally, you actually do have to have a credibly nationalist opposition for the military to switch sides, and the sheer feckless quality of the opposition doesn't give dissenters in the state machinery the security they'd need for the decision to decisively switch sides. I also believe that Brazil's parliamentary coup (and Trump's antics) has quietly diminished conservative legitimacy in the rest of South America.

Maduro will simply outwait these protests, if there is anything at all in the tank. And if there's nothing at all in the tank and state completely implodes, Venezuela is probably Libya.