VENEZUELA has changed and is still changing and, even it if worries a few, it will keep changing. The old routines and ways of doing things may not go on, they are too costly hurdles to be left aside by the very few unprepared ready to look the other way.

What seem to be the features of this new Venezuela?

On a prominent place law abidance against the routine of unlawful actions and lack of legal security: the same clear rules for every one and as permanent as possible, this the outcry when observing the unprecedented adoption of statutes that are not adequately complied with in most cases. On the same level we have the request to make of the judiciary an impartial and professional set of judges been able to fully perform their roles of lawful and peaceful non venal arbitrators of conflicts among citizens, organizations and institutions.

Another component is shaped by the need to break the tradition of impunity and to apply without hesitating the provided sanctions against those who break the law, whoever the may be. In other words, that the rule of law be the privileged space where social relationships are maintained and developed, and that if not, then the provide punishment system be enforced in a pertinent and efficient way.

Last, there is no other solution than to rebuild the institutional tissue and to rehabilitate Government, by annihilating the culture of clientele, of favoritism and of friendship links. That is to say, the establishment of some normative order on line with the culture and accepted by all social demands, while it aims at the same time towards the expansion of a civilizing tissue, increasingly more modern and, above all, efficient and able to cast off special jurisdictions or privileges.

This implies dealing with a strong State, that is to say one that plays its role as the coordinator of the new country's project effort's, of executor of its government, programmatic aspect and making proper, adequate and productive use of public property. As we stand, their is no sense in the propositions claiming for "State downsizing" or affirming that "the best State is the non existing one".

All the former has many outlets and purposes, but the main thing is its urgent and mandatory need in order to face the struggle against corruption in all its aspects (deviation, embezzlement, unlawful enrichment, administrative irregularities, inefficiency, incompliance of standards). This is much so in the Venezuelan case where corruption is blamed by more than one radical sector for social impoverishment and, what is more serious, for the illegitimizing of democracy.

It is obvious that this process, just taking off in some aspects, will take long to settle down permanently.

The New Controlling Office being required

These non to be adjourned requirements are those demanded by the countries and they create the need for an Office of the Comptroller General of the Republic fitting the changes and dynamics by them created. In other words, the Office of the Comptroller, as many other institutions, played its role as long as it could in a public system now facing bankruptcy and that must be replaced. This Office, as part of the system, would be unable, if not significantly renewed, to cope with the new demands of a less permissive and more requiring democracy, one that is more unhappy and less disposed to accept things as they are. Hence change is imperative to it, not as a way of criticizing its past, but rather as a wager on its present and future validity.

It must underline its function in that direction as a constitutional agency, that is one with controlling, watching over and censuring power over national income, expenditures and property and on all operations related thereto, inserted within the very same structure of democratic republican ruling and law.

Said constitutional and legal control, must be done on all the administration and officers, without distinctions, in an objective, impartial and responsible way. And this in order that it may be possible for it —without any hint of weaknesses— to establish administrative liability wherever it may be found, and whoever may be liable, and to impose fines, file objections and, if such were the case, to request the officer's removal and disqualifying, on top of forwarding investigative records, whenever it may determine suspicion of crime, to the Office of the Prosecutor General for eventual civil and criminal actions.

The former implies the defense of institutional autonomy, and full independence of the Comptroller's Office against any pressure: that it neither be the friend nor the enemy of government, of officers or of opposition groups. Its mission must be fulfilled under full reliance on its clear legal competencies, disregarding sympathies or antipathies it may create around it.

A fundamental support in order to reach these objectives —and they are not new but rather non to be adjourned—is the insertion into something coming close to an authentic culture of informing the citizen: institutions must leave behind their old feature of being real, impenetrable "black boxes". It is an institutional duty in democratic society to see that the citizen is informed in true, opportune and stridency free way of what happens in public administration and of what the Comptroller's Office does to defend correct, lawful and efficient use of public property.

Those administrations trying to confine information to the summits and that, besides, lean to withdraw the great issues of public interest from public discussion, are not democratic. The Office of the Comptroller is an institution of democracy for democracy. Outside democracy it does not make sense, since antidemocratic governments, by definition, annihilate all possible controls over them. And all control and scrutiny on government performance begins with the amount, quality and opportunity of the available information. Accordingly, the Office of the Comptroller is bound to inform not only Congress but society also in order that the latter may be lawfully made aware of the agency's action, that it supports them and relies on them.

Summing up, it is necessary, both institutionally and democratically, to count with a strong Controlling Office.

A democracy with greater legitimacy

In the midst of all these critiques, let us recall that "democracy is the societies' coming of age" as Fernando Savater says. This is not a purely formal process and we are note dealing with imposed institutions, What is the determining is the identification of society with its task of "producing" democracy.

One of the spaces from where such production is possible and necessary is, without any doubt, the Office of the Comptroller, because, among other things and as we have said it already, the controlling power is valid and real only in democratic systems.

Accordingly, it is necessary that the Controlling Office, through the efficiency, transparency and solidity of its actions' result, may be able to reinforce the legitimacy of democracy and that it be, at the same time, one of the components of the urgent rehabilitation and modernization of Government's operation under the nation's and the world's new more complex and demanding conditions.

In concrete, it must emphasize on making more decent, and cooperating with, the modernization and efficiency of public administration, in rehabilitating the importance of public function and of the honest and responsible conduct of the public officer, always within the horizon that there is no reason allowing Government to break the law.

In this overview, it seems obvious that it becomes absolutely necessary to innovate and reorganize the controlling power itself, to wit: make it independent all throughout the country by means, among other decisions, the election of comptrollers by competition test at all levels of administration; transfer regular competence towards the administration, so that the controlling power may be able to concentrate on the sectors' central cores and on the government's programming and administrative activity; to implement management control, going beyond the auditing and supervising activity spread over a series of spots, over minor accounting practices, on routine procedures, and stressing more on the real reach of the objectives proposed in order to govern and on the invested public budget; create the national controlling system (central and decentralized, state and municipal administration). To be then, an effective and articulate power and not a loose and disperse one.

All these are elements needed to shape up a strong democracy.

Not even one more minute of corruption?

It seems evident that Venezuelan civil society is fed up of enduring corruption and inefficiency. And the Office of the Comptroller, with results in its hands, must answer to this clamorous demand.

If not, its management shall become and additional layer of the skepticism and rage now seemingly nested in our social climate. Impunity must disappear. Without applying terrorist styles nor with renewed witch hunting, with cold and firm prudence, a new Controlling Office for a new Venezuela, is bound to significantly to cut away impunity in public administration, corruption ties with private sector agents and links between protected and privileged economic activity, political party financing and deviation of public property for sector, group or individual purposes.

It is clear: any change implies conflicts, tensions, accusations, disqualification; it has always been like that because change touches great power interests and long established uses. But, nowadays, the historic duty of the Office of the Comptroller, is that of cooperating with the imposition of the CULTURE OF HONESTY.

Not only moral or ethical reasons are valid for such purpose, other more immediately tangible ones also: corruption and inefficiency have a huge cost on economic activity and, generally, on the people's disposition towards work and creativity, with deadly effects on our internal and international competitiveness. This is why in a society pretending to deepen its democracy and its competitiveness, a strong Controlling Office is so necessary.

To say it in a few words: we require a Controlling Office contributing to a modern Venezuela, with a decent public administration and an efficient Government, counting on an informed and participating civil society in the middle of a great process of new institutionalization of public life.

For that, let us conclude, we must deserve and impose a Controlling Office which is efficient, objective, impartial, legal and institutional: that fully meets its obligations and bowing only to the truth of the facts and the law, just as its current management proposes.

As it may be clearly seen, it is not a question of dealing with a simple challenge in the Venezuelan's agenda for these years, since it is not a task for the future, it is a present one. But then it is one of the tasks of which the achievements have considerable impact on the hopes and encouragement that we all need to believe that it is possible to "make a State" in an efficient democracy. It is also a challenge being worth a mass, as it was said of Paris centuries ago.