On March 15, 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced on his popular weekly TV show that the administration of Venezuela's ports and airports will be transferred from the state governments to the National Government in order to defend national sovereignty and combat corruption, contraband, and drug trafficking.

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VHeadline commentarist Arthur Shaw writes: On March 15, 2009, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced on his popular weekly TV show that the administration of Venezuela's ports and airports will be transferred from the state governments to the National Government in order to defend national sovereignty and combat corruption, contraband, and drug trafficking.

As far as drug trafficking is concerned, it is significant that US imperialists now accuse Venezuela of not only failing to fight drug traffickers, but also of aiding drug traffickers. This a grave accusation from the imperialists against the glorious Venezuelan Revolution. The US imperialists relentlessly allege that Venezuela's ports and airports are major transshipment centers for most of the cocaine that enters the USA.

Most of the bourgeois leaders, including their entire families, of the opposition in Venezuela are involved in drug trafficking and human smuggling (prostitutes, slaves, child slaves, illegal immigrants, etc) to the US market, the biggest market for illegal drugs in the world and one of the largest markets for smuggled people.

Five of the twenty-three Venezuelan states (about 20% of the states) are governed by the opposition and bourgeois leaders of these five governmental entities opposed Hugo Chavez' "nationalization" or "centralization" of the ports and airports. Eighteen of the twenty-three states (about 80% of the states) are governed by revolutionaries or by their allies and these 18 entities support the Chavez' takeover of ports and airports.

As soon as the reactionaries heard Chavez' announcement Sunday, March 15, the corrupt bourgeois leaders of the opposition in Venezuela jumped up and screamed "Hugo, you can't take over ports and airports because Article 164 of the Constitution vests exclusive competence over ports and airports in state governments, not in the National Government." The reactionary bourgeois leaders also screamed that a recent law passed by the National Assembly granting Hugo Chavez the authority and "competence" to take over the ports and airports is unconstitutional because the law conflicts with Article 164 of the Constitution.

This Article 164 says the states have "EXCLUSIVE" competence for the  "conservation, management and exploitation of ...  ports and airports in commercial use."  But the states must exercise their exclusive competence "in coordination with the National Executive" or, in other words, in coordination with Hugo Chavez. The term "competence" in Article 164 is used narrowly and technically to refer more to the possession of legal authority over something rather than to the skill or know-how required to do something.

So, the starting point of the opposition is Article 164 which says state governments run ports and airports.

The opposition and the US imperialists may not be right in this dispute over the ports and airports, but at least for once they have, in Article 164, one leg to stand on. So far, nobody denies that the ports and airports are in commercial use. The opposition argues however that the takeover of the ports and airports by the National Government is more than "coordination" that Article 164 mentions and contemplates. So, in our discussion, we don't have to be too concerned with the side issues about "commercial use" and "coordination."

At point blank range, our question is: Can Hugo Chavez legally takeover ports and airports?

Article 164 is not the only article in the Constitution that deals with ports and airports. For example, Article 156 of the Constitution, in part, says: "The national transportation and shipping system and air, overland, ocean, river and lake transportation of a national nature; ports, airports and their infrastructure"   are in the "competence" of the national public power to which the president of the Venezuela belongs. Article 156 expressly mentions ports and airports as being under the competence of the National Government.  But even if Article 156 had failed to mention port and airports, almost nobody ... but a lunatic member of the bourgeois opposition ... would argue that the reference to the "national transportation and shipping system and air, overland, ocean, river and lake transportation of a national nature" excludes ports and airports.

• How can ports and airports, under 164, be under  the "EXCLUSIVE" competence of state governments when 156 shamelessly and flagrantly puts the same ports and the same airports under the competence of the National Government?

What kind of "exclusivity" is this? 

This bizarre kind of "exclusivity" that spreads itself out over multiple entities perplexes us.

So, what we have here is, on the one hand, Article 164 saying the states got the ports and airports but the state governments must coordinate with the National Government. And, on the other hand, we have Article 156 saying the National Government ... too ... got the ports and airports with no mention, in Article 156, of a duty on the part of the National Government to coordinate with state governments.

The difficulty is that "the Constitution is the supreme law " according to its Article 7.  But both articles, 164 and 156, are parts of the Constitution. So, both articles partake of the supreme.  Is 164 more supreme than 156 or vice versa? What we really need, here, is a piece of law that flat-out says, in cases of a conflict, a provision of the constitution that applies to the National Government supersedes a similar constitutional provision that applies to state governments. But, so far, we haven't found a piece of law of this nature.

Perhaps, Article 136 throws some light on this perplexing dispute between the national and some of state governments over the ports and airports.  Article 136, in part, says "Each of the branches of Public Power [that is, the whole Venezuelan state] has its own functions, but the organs charged with exercising the same shall cooperate with one another to attain the ends of the State." 

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

The class struggle, both from the side of the struggle of the bourgeoisie against the people and from the side of the struggle of the people against the bourgeoisie, comes in three forms -- the political, economic, and ideological. Lenin wrote "Engels recognizes, not two forms (political and economic) of the great struggle of [the socialist movement], as is the custom among us, but three, placing the theoretical struggle on a par with the first two."

• The struggle over the ports and airports in Venezuela touches all three forms -- political, economic, and ideological --  of the class struggle. Economically, the ports and airports are key means of distribution of goods and services. Sabotage at the ports and airports can bring the whole economy to a halt.

Ideologically, a democracy, among other things, exercises power in accordance with the rule of law. On the one hand, if the opposition brainwashes a lot of people to believe that the takeover of the ports and airports by the National Government IS NOT in accordance with the rule of law, specifically with Article 164, then the opposition will be well-positioned to spread lies and calumnies that the Venezuelan state is not a democracy or, in other words, the Venezuelan state is a dictatorship. On the other hand, if the Revolution shows that the takeover of the ports and airports by the National Government IS in accordance with the rule of law, specifically with Article 156, the Revolution affirms the democratic essence and character of the Venezuelan state, preserving and increasing the credibility, legitimacy, and prestige of the Venezuelan Government and the Revolution at home and throughout the world.

Politically, the vile and degenerate US imperialists in charge of the bourgeois regime in Washington are systematically fabricating a pretext for an adventurous attempt to overthrow the democracy of the Venezuelan state and overthrow the sovereignty of the Venezuelan people. Like in Iraq, the degenerate US imperialists plan to install in Venezuela a sham or neo-colonial "democracy" that fronts for a brutal US military dictatorship. To brainwash and to warp as many US citizens as possible to accept the animalistic aggression that the US imperialists are planning and preparing against Venezuela, the US capitalist media and bourgeois US regime in Washington ceaselessly and falsely accuse the Venezuelan state of drug trafficking. This psychological warfare operation resembles the year-long campaign of lies and slanders of the US capitalist press and imperialist US regime against the people of Iraq, alleging, in that instance, filthy lies about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and Iraqi 9/11 complicity.

• The aggression and occupation that resulted from that propaganda campaign has already occasioned the deaths of 2,000,000 Iraqi citizens, completely innocent of the filthy lies of the US imperialists about WMDs and 9/11.

The Venezuelan Government and Revolution need more time to prepare for the transparent bestiality of  US imperialists as this bestiality approaches the territorial aggression it contemplates and craves.

Taking over the ports and airports, used by the mass of the Venezuelan bourgeoisie and by US imperialists to smuggle cocaine into the USA may give the Venezuelan Revolution more time to prepare for the defense of the heroic Republic of workers and small farmers and to show the glorious US people that the degenerates and demons who compose US imperialism are full of lies, slanders, malice, and hatred: therefore, these imperial degenerates can not be trusted again by the US people ... after Iraq.

Arthur Shaw
arthur.shaw@vheadline.com

http://www.vheadline.com/shaw

Submitter: Roy S. Carson

Submitters Bio:
Roy S. Carson is veteran foreign correspondent (45+ years in the business) currently editor & publisher of VHeadline Venezuela reporting on news & views from and about Venezuela in South America -- available for interviews -- call Houston 713.893.1433