In effect, simultaneously with the formal and ritualized ways of the Judiciary with its procedural and substantial instruments, there have always been, throughout mankind's history, several roads to resolve disputes. In fact, competitiveness in the U.S.A. has been recovered by means of the incorporation and development of alternate forms to litigation, as an addition to the improvement and permanent evolution of their judicial system. In other words, a country will be more or less competitive inasmuch as its citizens, groups, corporations and other interacting elements are able to find effective ways to settle their disputes, be it by means of trials or through non conventional formulas.

The problem in Venezuela is that the informal ways traditionally used, attached to formal mechanisms, have reached their highest level of unpopularity, if not effectiveness. We are referring to corruption and all its varieties, friendship ties, companionship, influence traffic, partisanism, nepotism and so on. It is a requirement of prudence and globalization. There is no option. If we are to enter the so called First World, we must be able to speak its language and to overcome the parochial feature of the party's local office or of compaternity.

Even in the best of cases, however, the increase in alternative ways of dispute resolution may not substitute the ritualized channeling controversies. For such reason, not only should one promote mediation and arbitration systems such as the Justice of the Peace, but also the procedural reform (criminal and civil) and other important substantial laws such as the fundamental Codes -Civil, Criminal and Commercial. Any effort made in this sense could be more important than a constitutional amendment: it would be signed by a new standard frame, in consonance with the fundamental values of the 1961 Constitution -an area where we are lagging behind.

One of these aspects, one that I consider of primordial transcendence, is the immediate possibility of modifying the criminal process, to go from a mixed and fundamentally inquisitive system, to an accusatory, guarantee abiding, public, oral and transparent focus. It is time to enter the contemporaneous and to overcome the colonial hindrance of a criminal system that does not admit the presumption of innocence and maintains the inquisitorial secret as the summum of process.

In this sense, the elite of leaders (politicians, intellectuals, professionals, businessmen, managers and others) find themselves before a dilemma: either to participate in the reform of the state's fundamental institutions in order that they may serve society, or to be run over by emotional initiatives such as that of judicial emergency or the High Commission of Justice, akin to a coup d'état against the Judiciary, something that could result in the change of some party-member judges by judges linked to pressure group and to other parties in a game of "you are out, I am in".

There is something that we have not dared to face: the principle of the judges' independence, in a way preventing that they may be penetrated by external powers, specially by political parties. To say nothing of the problem of their pay (a Supreme Court Magistrate earns less than US $ 1,000); this makes the judges quite vulnerable.

Then, what kind of judges do we want? We shall have those we deserve. It all depends on what we may offer and require.

Finally, on a parallel course with the increase and fostering of new non legal forms of dispute resolution, it is imperative that the formal ways be strengthened, as a means to re-vitalize, re-legitimate and to be reborn as a country.

Law still has its importance. Although I do not deny its deficiencies, it keeps being the most realist way of getting conventions and norms that may serve everyone. What we need is that we may all understand this and that we become more vigilant as to how the laws are created, how they are guaranteed and how they are enforced. This is what the citizen goes for. Inasmuch as it is better, there will be lesser need for the laws and the judges.