VenEconomy: A Communal State Moves Forward in Venezuela
 From the Editors of VenEconomy
Latin American Herald Tribune
September 26, 2014

When Nicolás Maduro finally revealed what the much-trumpeted “shakeup” was all about on September 5, he performed a major cabinet reshuffle that was clouded by the departure of the “king of oil and sheik of the Venezuelan economy,” Rafael Ramírez, from three of his multiple public offices (Ministry of Oil and Mining, head of PDVSA, and Vice President of Economic Affairs.)

This important and strategic piece moved by Maduro was the transfer of Elías Jaua, the former chancellor, to two newly created public offices: the Vice Presidency of Socialism Development and Eco-socialism and the Ministry of Communes and Social Movements.

What many did not realize is that with these appointments Maduro was taking a new step toward the consolidation of the so-called “Communal State” as outlined in the Plan of the Homeland by the late Hugo Chávez to build the Socialism of the 21st century, in other words, the “Cubanization of Venezuela.”

Not for nothing he put Jaua in charge of those ministries, being him one of the most conspicuous communists leading the formation process of the Communal State, and who has shown an extraordinary impudence in the implementation of the Land Law from 2006 to 2012, razing every privately owned land there is in the country.

In their latest statements, both Maduro and Jaua clearly set the path they have in mind: They “will use everything in their power to demolish the remains of the ‘bourgeois state,’ because the communes are local government institutions seeking to break with sectarianism and must meet the needs of all those living in their respective communities,” even if these entities are not foreseen in the Magna Carta and their formation was denied to Chávez after losing a referendum on the Constitution.

This was confirmed with the installation of the Presidential Council of Communes on September 17, which already relies upon 874 registered communes and 554 that have already met all the requirements. That day, Maduro claimed that “Chávez had requested 3,000 to be installed. The communal model must reach urban cities.”

Such council has three spokesmanships at national, state and communal levels. “The national one shall be presided over a community leader, to be elected annually, who among his/her functions will be that of convening a plenary meeting every two months for the discussion of projects and decision-making. The one at state level will be comprised by five spokespersons for each federal entity; that is to say, 120 spokespersons (sic) to assume that role for a period expected to last a year. And that at communal level will have sectoral meetings and will be in charge of permanent spaces of self-government institutions: planning, economy, community banks, the comptroller’s office, parliaments, among others.”

In addition, the National Executive approved credits to six communes for Bs.46.95 million ($7.45 million at the official Bs.6.30 exchange rate) without revealing the implementation of an audit process, which violates all legal regulations, without control and without the protection of a framework that regulates the earmarked resources, despite a warning from the Comptroller General of the Republic in his Report and Accounts of 2011 on the “weak internal control” of those entities.

On top of that, the communes will now become part of the “Gordian knot” of corruption by being incorporated to the foreign exchange allocation system through the National Fund of Communal Councils (Safonacc) and the Presidential Council of Communes.

On September 17, Jaua raised the challenge of showing “that we can rule better than the bourgeoisie,” making it obvious that this challenge has as primary goal the definitive establishment of a Communal State, of which the Government has already made some progress all these years.

The challenge for the democratic country, the MUD opposition party and its new Executive Secretary, Jesús “Chuo” Torrealba, is to understand to what extent this system has been established in the population and then create effective democratic mechanisms to counter it in defense of democracy.

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