National Communard Council - Venezuela

= aims to coordinate the country’s commune movement and present its demands to the national government.

Description

"The council was formed in the western state of Lara during a three day meeting of around 2000 communards (commune members) from around the country, most of whom are representatives of a particular commune. The meeting was the fifth national gathering of the independent National Communard Network since the organisation was founded in 2009.

The move represents another step forward for Venezuela’s communards, who seek to replace the state’s representative political structures, particularly those of local and regional governance, with direct participatory bodies such as communal councils and communes.

Communal councils in Venezuela are small neighbourhood organisations where local residents organise to develop their local community and run community affairs. They can also receive public funds to undertake a variety of projects in their area.

Communes meanwhile are made up of groups of community councils. They are created when local residents hold an election to select spokespeople from each community council in a given area to form a communal parliament, which then assigns different sub committees to cover community affairs over a larger territorial zone.

The commune can take on larger scale tasks and responsibilities than individual community councils. They can also register with the Ministry of Communes, which makes them eligible to apply for public funds to create productive, educational, cultural, infrastructural or other developmental projects.

During the meeting last weekend, communard Abraham Simenez explained some of the aims of the commune movement to Venezuelanalysis.com.

“The commune movement is a launching pad to consolidate this process of change toward socialism, to put people first. It’s a way for us to end with the state as it is currently constituted, with regional state governments and mayors, and for us to arrive at a communal state with constituent power [direct participatory bodies], the base of which are the communes,” he said.

The activist continued, “It’s through the communes and organised communities that we can propose projects [to the national government] to acquire public funds and carry them out ourselves for the good of the community”.

The driving force behind the creation of the National Communard Council last weekend was the National Communard Network, which groups together many of the country’s communes.

The council aims to present the commune movement’s demands directly to President Nicolas Maduro vía the Presidential Council of Communal Governance. It will also work to strengthen grassroots and regional communal organising, and will seek to take on certain state powers itself, such as requesting to take over some functions currently performed by the Ministry of Communes.

The National Communard Council is composed of communal spokespeople from each regional state, and has sub-councils on communal economy, political organisation, communication, education, security and defence, and youth.

The specific characteristics and functions of each council were decided after communards met for a day of discussion groups. The conclusions reached were presented at a final plenary session during which the different councils were sworn in.

As a result of the discussion groups, it was announced that the demands to be put to the national government include to take over management of the national commune registry from the Ministry of Communes, and to be granted control over public TV channel Tves. Other proposals agreed were to strengthen the communal economy, found new institutions of higher education, create a communal newspaper, and form a communal intelligence agency and strengthen the communal militia." (http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10727)

Status

June 2014:

"In a national register of community organisations undertaken last September, it was found that there existed 40,000 communal councils and 1,400 formed or developing communes in the country." (http://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10727)