1
1
1
The public power under Article 136 has three branches -- the municipal power, the state power, and the national power. The dispute over the ports and airports is between the state and national powers. What Article 136 seems to say relative to existing dispute, is: when the state and national powers perform the same functions -- e.g., looking after ports and airports -- the State Governors and the President shall "cooperate" to attain the ends of the State.
This is easier said than done.
What are these "ends of the State" mentioned in Article 136?
The preamble of the constitution speaks about the "ends of the State." The preamble, in part, reads " ... the supreme end ... [is] ... reshaping the Republic to establish a democratic, participatory and self-reliant, multiethnic and multicultural society in a just, federal and decentralized State that embodies the values of freedom, independence, peace, solidarity, the common good, the nation's territorial integrity, comity and the rule of law for this and future generations ..."
No doubt, the enraged counter-revolution will pounce greedily on the word "decentralized" in the preamble. The Revolution, on the other hand, will point with dignity to the word "federal."
The word "federal" means "pertaining to or of the nature of a union of states under a central government distinct from the individual governments of the separate states."
What does the word "under" mean here? The definition suggests that the governments of the separate states are "under" the central government. The opposition argues however that State Governments can tell the National Government what to do about the ports and airports even though the State Governments are "under" the National Government.
The opposition's argument doesn't make sense.
The word "decentralize" means "to distribute the administrative powers or functions of [ a central government or of ] a central authority." Clearly, when the central government in Caracas takes over ports and airports it centralizes the administrative powers or functions related to the ports and airports. Necessarily, to centralize is not to decentralize and vice versa. But the preamble doesn't say that a decentralized state is one of the "ends of the State," rather the preamble says that a "federal and decentralized State" is one of the "ends of the State." And in a federal state, whether decentralized or otherwise put together, the individual governments of the separate states are "under" the central government. The opposition wants to put the state governments on the same level or above the National Government. The opposition doesn't wanted to be "decentralized" under the central government.
Hugo Chavez relies on another article of the Constitution to defend his takeover of ports and airports. Article 232 says rather awkwardly" The President ... is obligated to endeavor the guarantee of ... independence, integrity, sovereignty and defense of the Republic."
Drug trafficking at Venezuela's ports and airports, a crime that has proved very hard for the state governments of Venezuela to suppress, is a traffic about which the capitalist US press and the bourgeois regime in Washington continuously complain, denouncing the National Government headed by Hugo Chavez for the law enforcement failures of state governments, including the law enforcement failures of state governments headed by the opposition. At the same time, the capitalist press and the bourgeois US regime consistently ignore or, more correctly, cover up the real perpetrators behind the drug traffic to the US -- the US Drug Enforcement Administration, the CIA, Colombian allies of US imperialism, and Venezuelan allies (the "opposition") of US imperialism.
Article 232, quoted in part above, obliges the president of Venezuela to act.
In 1988, a Miami court, infested by vile Cuban Americans reactionaries, accused the president or, rather, the CEO of Panama of drug trafficking. In 1989, the US imperialists ... like a wild beast or some other kind of animal ... charged into Panama, slaughtered 10,000 Panamanians, grabbed the CEO, dragged him to the USA, and threw him into a US prison. After doing 17 years as a political prisoner in the USA, Manuel Noriega's prison sentence ended Sunday September 9, 2007. But Noriega remains in a US prison or, more correctly, in a US concentration camp as of March 2009, because the US imperialists see no reason to release anybody from US prisons or from US concentration camps simply because the prisoner does the time unjustly imposed on him as a prison sentence. Martin Torrijos, the current president of Panama, hints that Manuel Noriega deserves a full pardon after the atrocities and persecution Noriega suffered at the hands of the bestial US imperialists.
US imperialists would love to also "panama" Venezuela.
This is exactly what the slimy bourgeois opposition wants to happen in Venezuela, except that the opposition wants the bestial US imperialists to slaughter a lot more than a mere 10,000 Venezuelans during the envisioned imperialist aggression and occupation of Venezuela.
CONCLUSION
