Time has come for electoral debate. No more space for novel offers, nor to pretend. Today's debate will tell us who were at the service of a change of standards impelling participation of all Venezuelans in decisions linked to the choosing of the most important public officers and those who made efforts to keep hateful privileges an prevent the access of new generations to the conduction of public affairs. It will not be easy to open another civic debate on the electoral issue once Congress should close the pending discussions, under the congressmen's "this is a final judgment" mentality we will be told that the issue was well discussed and that, accordingly, we Venezuelans should be concerned with other issues having greater importance for the country's development. This is why I must insist on calling attention on some aspects that should be confuted by public opinion in order to prevent that the reform process, currently at Congress as its venue, should turn into a new frustration

The separation of Elections

It is possible that the new generations of voters ignore that, for many years we used to vote with cards in Venezuela. Big cards to elect the President and small cards, placed separately to elect Senators, deputies to Congress and to the state Legislatures, Councilmen. All that was done in the same day. The results were obvious: when voting simultaneously and with same color cards, both the big and the small one, what we were actually evaluating, and mostly what we were deciding on, was on the choosing of the President, something by itself quite important for a country that had only once elected a President, Rómulo Gallegos with the people's vote, prior to 1958. As years went by this single election turned out being insufficient, for the people were aware of the fact that the multiple public decision centers, other than the President and in many ways conditioning their work and/or interfering with it, were not elected under a specific vote addressed to them but rather that their appointment was a result of their having chosen the small card with the same "color" as the big one for the President. The President towed everybody: the elected public officer and the political parties that have always gotten less votes than those available oxygen bottles: the presidential candidates.

The citizen became more demanding as to electoral matters and the failure of many local administrations led to important reforms in the municipal area, The first one was made in 1978. Municipal elections were split from the other ones and were called for after the December 1973 elections. This was a moment of celebration for democracy, since as the elector had a better chance to discern on who should be elected councilman, his power was being widened: he was now electing someone else in addition, he was influencing in some other way other decision making centers directly affecting his life. The process went on getting better during 1984, until, in 1989, after extended pressure from the world being the least close to political parties and at a bright moment of the democracy opening's culture, that was able to permeate to far away corners of day to day debate, direct election became, by name and surname, of Governors and City Hall Chairmen non known as Mayors, on account of their widened role as resource managers and no longer only being limited to act as legislating bodies' chairmen when passing municipal legislation.

The process continued and a percentage of uninominal vote was introduced as a criterion to elect a portion of Congress, of the State Legislatures and Municipal Councils. The flow of the entire set of legal amendments seems to have stopped here with regard to the opening to the public, the non incumbent people, to the citizen, of the provision of and public offices office holders whose decisions would affect them forever.

The elections to be held in 1998 to choose the President and members of Congress, will coincide with the elections held every three years for Governors, members of regional Legislatures, Mayors and Councilmen; the will coincide also with the elections for members of the Parish Board. This grouping of elections implies going backwards with regard to the country's political-administrative decentralization and to the elector's elevation as a primary source of public decision. To elect 6,500 on the same day, from members of Parish Boards to the President of the Republic, will imply a great effort for the great elector from a mechanical standpoint since he will be forced to close himself behind the curtain, under the pressure of the line of waiting voters, under that of his own hurry and, at the end, not all will have the patience to calmly choose the members of the Parish Boards, the Councilmen, the Mayor, the deputies to the State Legislatures, the deputies to Congress, the Senators, the Governor and the President of the Republic. He will make his choice of voting for the President, shying away from appropriate evaluations for other offices. Perhaps he won't even vote for any one else, unless he sees some one being particularly known, thus producing huge abstention as to the election of those closer to him as a citizen. Or, it is also possible, in order not to lose his vote, he will choose to vote for some one close to the President for whom he is voting, with what, by simplifying, he will be voting for the Party backing the presidential candidate. We are facing the risk, when having all these elections at the same time, of really doing a single election and faking to the world that we are choosing 6,500 different persons.

The greater effort, however, will not be in the election itself, as just said, it will be rather in the previous months, during the campaign, when the citizen being interested in his neighborhood's issues may be able to observe that discussions related to this, his world, are underestimated by the media and by those nominating local leaders for the sake of a "greater" debate, a more inclusive and global one, that of the Presidency. I do not doubt that the presidential campaign would swallow, literally speaking, the regional and local debates, strengthening the centralizing culture that is based on the premise that "the big issues must be solved first, there will be time for the small", but, also, local leadership will be minimized under the strong wave of the national candidates' tours, in view of their importance, or of the control they exert on political parties for which "national" issues go before the local ones and which undoubtedly would "promote" and center the debate on those they deem more attractive. How much terrain would decentralization lose! To this mischievous mechanism one must add that, for some reason or the other —they always have abundant ones on hand— they would not find time, and would find it too dangerous, to select the candidates for these instances in every town and region, doing it rather at a central level as a contribution aimed at avoiding local conflicts not required for the proper handling of the process…Which one?

The simultaneous holding of all these elections is an attempt against the elector and the regions. Curiously enough, some political parties' managers do not think so. They believe, on the contrary, that the most convenient for the managing organizations is to prevent splitting since this is a mechanism that that does not allow proper use of the "air carrier" effect that an attractive presidential candidate would exert and by doing so there would be no need to be concerned with local and state selections, since the candidates would be nominated from the top and they all would be happy because even if they were not good candidates they nevertheless would be all elected under the "vacuum cleaner" effect of the "good" national; strategy. This is the sarcastic tone where strategies supposedly designed by "friends" of decentralization moves.

The curious thing is that the thesis sustained by the "machinery-men", those who show no concern for the fact that each town, city and state should have the representatives they deserve but who are rather interested in making sure that "the party" does not lose in any town and accordingly offer to local leadership the attraction of a national "aircraft carrier", to which is added the opposite thesis, from the observation angle, but leading to the same results: since some "machinery men" pretend that the important thing is "the organization" and not the individuals, who are seen rather as hazardous to the collective entity, they try to impose presidential candidates without a good hold and lacking leadership qualities but with some chance of winning because they would be toed by the leadership of the candidates for the offices of Mayor, Governor, Councilmen and members of State Legislatures. Something like the opposite of an "aircraft carrier".

There are many enemies of decentralization, of power to the electors and of the deepening of democracy, and all would seem to join around several justifications for the position of having all the above mentioned elections on the same day. My concrete proposal is that the December 1998 elections be reduced to the President and Senators and Deputies to Congress, and that, six months later —a term offering plenty of time to discuss the issues of each site and state and for a democratic nomination of candidates— other elections would be held for Governors, Deputies to the State Legislatures, Mayors, and municipal officers.

Uninominal election

For years we had in our country a system of indirect, second, third and fourth degree elections, whereby the citizen —who was never consulted on the issue— delegated on other supposedly qualified leaders, the election of the President of the republic and of members of Congress. One of the conquests made in 1947 was the direct election of Venezuela's President. However, this "direct" vote has not been transferred to other public offices and a change of this nature would seem to face increasing resistance every day from the political elite, since it would imply ending with the mandatory slates system whereby some choose instead of us the range of candidates for whom we are asked to vote for the Senate, the House of Deputies, the Legislatures and City Councils. We have citizens in Venezuela with less political rights than others; some, the majority, decide on a single occasion, from a list not having been drawn up by them, who will be their "representatives", while other, the narrow and known minority, decide several times: they include themselves in the slates, excluding their internal competitors (party comrades) and, on a third level decision they impose the narrow stripe of territory where the voter must move if he wants to participate and, if not, let him refrain without bothering any one since the electoral statute does not provide for the negative vote that should be available to validate the opinion of those who do not agree with any nomination —the non-of-the-above vote.

The indirect, second and third degree vote is pretty much alive in Venezuela and it is a huge mound blocking the view of those who obediently repeat that there is intense democracy in the country. The solution for the citizen to directly choose his representatives, without intermediaries, is the single nominal vote. The mandatory slates system is the denial of political mobility, of national, regional and local leadership renewal and, besides, it exerts an anchoring effect on the parties when preventing them from looking for new interlocutors and spokesmen.

The same inner felt pressures coming from outside, that have led the political establishment to accept the direct election of Governors and Mayors, forced them, much against their will, to admit some quota of representatives elected under their full name, in other words under single nominal vote and not within the aegis of the slates where some of them hide, and go on unnoticed, to be elected and then pretend before the country that they hold a leadership that was never given to them. This partial only admission has prevented the electoral system's renewal; it has acted as a strong sleeping pill for the street pressure, leaving the political establishment's "quotas" untouched and creating, besides, a rude situation of public representation organs made of people having been chosen at "finger point" and elected by the hauling effect of the electoral current, and other, elected under their full names, representing legitimate circuits, who, in order to be reelected shall have to go out again to face the voters and ask for their votes, explaining all their actions while in office, while other will return, unobtrusively to run for office from the safety of some "aircraft carrier", having first negotiated a winning position in the slate.

All this must change. Time is running short. All this must change.

Two false arguments have been brought against absolute nominal vote, against the possibility that all candidates should be elected having been directly nominated under their full names, and not through a slate nor with colors. These arguments are the proportional representation of minorities and the defense of the electoral system against the great economic forces. Both arguments are full of gibberish. The defenders of proportional representation of minorities assert an absurdity, based on the Venezuelan tradition of the last decades. The truth is that electoral consultations are made in order to attend to the criteria of majorities and to organize public service in accordance with the will of these majorities that, on their turn, shall benefit from, or be affected by, the elected officers" success or errors. Democracy is the system of the majority, not of the minorities. The minorities' system is aristocracy, the ruling Courts or the close and watertight partisanship preventing access of the many to the decisions conditioning the collective group's life. Venezuela is about the single country where the absurdity has survived successfully of having somebody running office and after having been rejected by his voters who chose somebody else, then, as a loser, being all the same elected to Congress, to the Legislature or the City Council under a legislative conciliation agreement between the members of the political elite according to which he who loses wins… What was then the purpose of the consultation if a group of persons placed on "winning positions" are going to be elected anyhow?

It is not true that the absolute single nominal vote system that I back —not that of this cartoon of the "quotas"—, constitutes the dictatorship of the majorities preventing dissent. First, majorities never give perpetual verdicts. mandates are not eternal. Every three years those having been elected regionally must present themselves to account for their actions through their new nomination by parties and/or groups of electors, and the voters wait for this occasion to punish or to reward. What was majority backing three years ago may now be reduced to lower polls and become a minority. Democratic alternation is the true space for the minorities, it is the horizon letting them prove their reasons and/or expose the limitations and failures of the voters' previous elections of those having been elected. In the case of Venezuela, other than the alternating system we have, we must also point out that the regional and local realities are diverse. As of 1990, when the first elected Mayors and Governors began their mandates, all the parties were able to become government: the Communist party of Venezuela gained the Mayor's Office of Acarigua, the MEP party had the Governor of the state of Anzoátegui, Causa R the Governor of Bolívar, independent sectors won the office of Governor of Carabobo, AD was able to win for its candidates many Governor's offices and Mayor's offices, as did COPEI. MAS consolidated important regional positions. No single party ran over any other on a "national" level because regional feelings were expressed, although not perfectly through the slates' system.

The so called proportional representation of minorities was a scheme that already fulfilled its historical mission on the occasion of the overthrow of Pérez Jiménez's dictatorship it served to reconcile the elite of that time's opposition by means of the quotient system characterizing a representation of all winning and losing organizations, but the historical demand of 1996 is quite another one: the citizen is expecting a better and fuller representation, independently from the nominating party or electoral group. With the single nominal vote the majorities are really respected, there is election without previous mediation and the nominee is considered separately when deciding on his reelection or on the refusal of his request; this becomes rather difficult when the candidates are hidden in a list or behind a color.

The argument used to say that single nominal vote would open the way to the country's great economic interest is drawn from false premises worth being discussed in a separate paper. The first of them is the axiom according to which those who possess or lead capital, technology and business organization should be vetoed as public servants and/or as representatives of other Venezuelans. Their economic success' sanction is to turn them into second class citizens as to their political rights. This huge complex is part of our national tragedy and is one of the conditioning factors of a culture of which the results are being suffered by us: since the capital factor may not or "should" not participate in public matters, it is forced to do it under cover, through professional political leaders who indeed are considered able to manage public affairs because we would not have any crooked economic interest. Experience proves how far this dogma is from reality, even if thought by many as hygienic and preserver of public morality.

The second false premise sustained by those opposing nominal vote in order to avoid interference from the economically powerful, is to believe that those who have been elected until now under the mandatory slate system have become some sort of a health barrier that has prevented any bill or investigation in Congress from having ever been tainted by perverse intentions.

Our Congresses, thus, when having been elected from slates that were previously chosen by the parties' political tops, are essentially, according to this position, foreign to any vested interest other than the "good of the Nation". All this, of course, is plainly preposterous but quite useful at the time of looking for arguments to prevent that a small elite, as it has been until now, may lose the privilege of placing at, or taking away from, winning spots the largest bunch having ever existed to build false leaderships.

The truth is other: a Congress a State Legislature or a Municipal Council having been elected through nominal vote would become the hardest to overcome hurdle for any anti-Venezuelan intention, be it economic or political, for it would be necessary to bribe, buy —or as you may call it— each of the members of these bodies. It would be certainly more difficult than doing it trough "blocks" of elected officers obeying to a single voice. This reasoning which sows terror into single nominal vote has done great damage to the electoral system and has seriously delayed the adoption of corrective measures that now must be taken under precarious economic and political conditions; any inability or delay to react on the part of the country will be blamed by its enemies on single nominal vote.

Old and new political groups hold to the mechanism of appointing the country's leadership by finger point and with this vice not only will their lives go away, they will erase themselves from the map, but they also —and this is the most serious consequence— they compromise, on a day to day basis, the country's future, when preventing the election of the most able citizens.

Automation

As from the moment when the polling station opens, the ghost appears of fraud: electors prone to it by virtue of the fact that they identify themselves or with the consent of the station's members; votes that are accounted for favoring candidates or parties without having been cast as such; votes cast as for parties and candidates and taken away from them; interested additions of votes, something that turns the minutes of returns into testimonies of evil and falseness; interested totaling of the votes from the different polling stations, producing forging of results and elevating to the condition of public representatives those who never got real support from the people. All this has been and is most serious but even worse is the fact that no will nor dedication is been shown with regard to the adoption of a real automation system for the electoral process that may offer us transparent and reliable elections.

Some have proposed automaton of the totaling phase, in other words to take the minutes of the counting at the 25,000 polling stations in order to add the results in each of these minutes. This proposal is both insufficient and false. Insufficient because it leaves out of mechanized control the polling and counting action at each station and it is during these phases that numerous frauds have been committed. Voting machines are being successfully used in dozens of countries, with different features and, accordingly, nobody would be able to affirm that we would be improvising when automating the polling and counting. Automation of totals is a subsequent, yet also indispensable, process, not hard to cope with. What is advisable, then, is the automation of the emission of the vote, of the counting and totaling and not just this last phase only; all this would prevent serious sources of fraud and would not leave open "last minute negotiations" between the polling station members. If political parties are drawn away from the polling stations but we fail to automate the whole process, the country would be deceived, with most serious consequences for Venezuela's stability.

It is false also, because it creates the feeling that whoever does not support it —the automation— would seem to believe that there is no fraud in the casting of votes nor in the drawing of minutes of the counting process. Or is there something else under the sleeve?

In view of all what has been said, I support the splitting of municipal and regional elections from the national ones, I support single absolute nominal vote, and not just an increase in the nominal vote quotas and I also support the automation of the voting, counting and totaling process. There are two years and two months until the national elections and eight more for the regional ones. Plenty of time…will there be political will?