Caracas, June 22, 2023 (Press National Assembly) – This Thursday, the National Assembly (NA) approved the reform of the Organic Law of the Communal Councils. This instrument will further strengthen the co-management of the People’s Power and enables more effective planning, execution, and control of social projects for the benefit of the communities, with the saved vote of the Parliamentary Block of the Opposition.
Deputy Blanca Eekhout (PSUV/Miranda), president of the Permanent Commission for the Communes Development, pointed out that this reform constitutes a massive achievement for the people’s participative and protagonist democracy. She emphasized that it complies with the spirit of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela’s Constitution (CRBV), which establishes sovereignty resides in the people.
He acknowledged the people’s heroic participation that has remained strong in the construction of direct democracy, conquered in 2006 with the creation of this law. He added that now the country has a reform that allows, based on the communal experiences, the people are the government in their territory.
This law contains 58 articles that reinforce the previous one, which had 43. This way, the term of office of the spokespersons extends to three years, and the citizens’ assemblies strengthen as primary instances for the exercise of full democracy, emphasized the parliamentarian.
The legal instrument also has a Robinsonian vision, guarantees the processes’ simplification, and is not an obstacle to communal councils’ development.
The law establishes that the communal councils are representative and deliberative entities of citizen participation, whereby the communities propose, debate, formulate, decide, manage, and evaluate public policy projects and organize in administrative and social comptroller units.
At the NA session were spokespersons from 19 communal councils of the Capital District, specifically from the parishes 23 de Enero, La Pastora, Santa Rosalia, San Juan, and Sucre, as well as from Lara, Miranda, and La Guaira states, formed in communal blocks.
The President of the Parliament, Deputy Jorge Rodriguez (PSUV/ Capital District), congratulated the deputies in charge of the consultation process for carrying out this law reform. He also thanked the spokespersons who recently renewed their structures and now have a renewed organic law adapted to the new times.
The head of the Legislative Power delivered the law to a delegation of spokespersons of the socialist communes Antonio Jose de Sucre, Renacer de Vista Alegre, and Simon Bolivar.
Commune or Nothing is the Way to Socialism
For her part, Noris Herrera, from the San Juan parish Socialist Commune in Caracas, expressed her satisfaction, on behalf of the communal people, for the approval of this reform, impregnated with the proposals presented by the communal councils and communes.
“This new stage enables us to transit through Commander Hugo Chavez’s legacy in a determined manner and thus accompany the maximum leader of the Bolivarian Revolution, President Nicolas Maduro Moros,” said Herrera.
Community member Heriberto Mendez of the Fe Socialista Socialist Commune of 23 de Enero parish highlighted that the law reform amplifies the People’s Power’s scope to continue advancing towards socialism through the commune, which is the way.
