16 years fulfills law that gives sustenance to Communal Councils
This Saturday, April 9, marks 16 years since Commander Hugo Chávez Frías promulgated in 2006, during the broadcast of his Sunday program “Aló Presidente” number 252, the first Law of Communal Councils, published the following day in the Official Gazette Extraordinary No. 5,806.
“The Communal Councils are the fundamental and vanguard tool to advance in the construction of socialism, because they represent the fundamental cell of true revolutionary democracy,” said the revolutionary leader in the activity.
This legal instrument, containing 8 chapters and 33 articles, defines the Communal Councils (Art. 2) as instances of participation, articulation and integration between the various community organizations, social groups and citizens, which allow the organized people to exercise directly the management of public policies and projects aimed at responding to the needs and aspirations of the communities in the construction of a society of equity and social justice.
This law promotes the direct exercise of popular sovereignty and its relationship with the organs and entities of the Public Power, as well as the plans and projects linked to community development. It also constitutes the figure of the Communal Bank as an instance of economic, alternative, social and participatory development, and establishes the possibility of creating solidarity exchange mechanisms for goods and services.
The Communal Councils have as antecedents the Law of the Local Councils of Public Planning (2002), which mentions them for the first time as the main centers of participation and protagonism of the people to make viable ideas and proposals so that the organized community presents them before the Councils. Local Public Planning (CLPP). Subsequently, in the Organic Law of Municipal Public Power (LOPPM), of 2005, they remain as instances linked to the CLPP of municipal power and their functions are complemented for the exercise of Popular Power, forming part of the national planning system.
Evolution to Organic Law
These structures of popular sovereignty reached a higher rank in the legislative pyramid with the approval in 2009 of the Organic Law of Communal Councils, published in the Official Gazette number 39,335 dated December 28 of that year and which repealed the 2006 Law, maintaining eight chapters but expanding its articles from 33 to 61.
Subsequently, the National Assembly (AN) has sanctioned other instruments related to the Communal Councils such as the Organic Law of Social Comptrollership (2010), the Organic Law of the Communes (2010), the Organic Law of People’s Power (2010), the Law Law of the Communal Economic System (2010) and the Organic Law of Public and Popular Planning (2010), among others, which define spaces for popular participation and co-responsibility of the Communal Councils in the entire spectrum of national life and public work .
Along the same lines, on February 10, 2021, President Nicolás Maduro Moros submitted the draft Organic Law of Communal Cities for discussion by the National Parliament, in order to create a new organizational, social and productive model that serves for the diversification of the economy in the territories. On March 11, 2021, the AN approved the project in the first discussion and progress is currently being made in the second discussion.
T: Prensa MinComunas
