During a meeting with the National Broad Commission for Constitutional Reform, the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, emphasized the importance of preparing the entire process to implement the proposals for the 2025 constitutional reform:
“A journey in which we must prepare the entire intense process: debate, consult, draft and have the proposals for a 2025 constitutional reform, is a necessary task, a very complex one but one that must be resolved with inclusive, democratic and convening methods”, he guided.
The President stressed the need to listen to and take into account all the proposals, as well as «as we did in the consultation and debate of 1999.»
He recalled how, for the first time in history, the floodgates of the Federal Legislative Palace were opened and the constituents, “plenipotentiary parliamentarians, for the first time, went out to tour the fields, the neighborhoods, the streets, the squares, the universities for the first time a debate on the Magna Carta took place with an entire country.”
He also reflected on the history of the constituents in Venezuela, mentioning that “the constituent assembly of 1947 was a beautiful experiment” and assured that, although at that time the debates were broadcast through the radio, the necessary mechanisms to receive the opinion of the people were never available.
“Imagine, the radio was the center, television had not arrived, the whole family sat around the radio and for the first time the political debate was opened, after a long pro-imperialist dictatorship, (that) of Juan Vicente Gómez who by the knife (…) handed over our wealth to the imperialist transnational companies and turned Venezuela into an oil colony,” he detailed.
In this regard, he instructed the Minister of People’s Power for Communication and Information, Alfred Nazaret; and the Minister of People’s Power for Culture, Ernesto Villegas, to compile these debates “to show our people, because history is creating knowledge, values, strengths. Surely there will be recordings, there will be transcriptions.”
“The people were awakening,” he recalled, alluding to the social and political organization that began to flourish in the country.
The President stressed that the great process of participation took place in 1999, when the decree was signed to call for the first referendum in the political history of Venezuela, which “was not signed by Rómulo Betancourt, was not signed by Carlos Andrés Pérez, was not signed by Rafael Caldera, they did not do it, they could have done it, they had forty years in power, but it was signed by the Arañero de Sabaneta, the man of the people, our commander Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías,” he indicated, after recalling the difficulties they faced in that process.
Youth called to the historical process:
Previously, the head of State expressed that in the midst of a 2025 that has started accelerated and “in an accelerated historical time, the geopolitical time is accelerated, and the Bolivarian Revolution, the people of Venezuela, the changes and transformations are also accelerated. We have many battle fronts that must be taken care of, worked on and deepened.”
He also highlighted the members of the National Commission for Constitutional Reform: “We must see, in which country is the youth called to debate the great issues? That will mark the next 30 years. Here you are called, young people, I fully trust the Venezuelan youth to carry forward the ideas and the process of Constitutional Reform of 2025.”
