Posts Tagged ‘constitutional restoration’

“What Can Presently Be Stated About Venezuela”

July 18, 2026
Ricardo F. Morín
CGI 2026

An officially announced political process is scheduled to begin on August 1, 2026, while authorities in Washington are reportedly considering a broader mechanism through which the United States might assist Venezuela’s material reconstruction.   The former has been publicly confirmed by the parties and by the United States Department of State.   The latter remains under consideration as a longer-term technical and financial framework and has not yet become official United States policy, notwithstanding the humanitarian assistance already authorized by the United States in response to the recent earthquakes affecting portions of Venezuela.

The announced political process follows the removal of Nicolás Maduro from the exercise of executive authority on January 3, 2026.⠀⠀The governmental structure that had previously exercised public authority nevertheless remains in place as part of the transitional arrangements announced by the Trump administration.⠀⠀Those arrangements do not explain the constitutional consequence of the presidential election of July 28, 2024, despite the available voting records indicating that Edmundo González Urrutia had received the majority of the votes, while the electoral authorities withheld the complete results and declared Nicolás Maduro the winner.⠀⠀Nor do they identify whose constitutional authority is to be exercised after August 1.⠀⠀The possible establishment of a junta, or of some other governing authority composed of representatives drawn from opposing political factions, would leave that antecedent constitutional question unresolved.⠀⠀Any subsequent electoral process conducted under an authority whose constitutional basis has not first been established would necessarily inherit that unresolved condition.

Against that background, the contacts between Jorge Rodríguez, who presides over the legislative body presently exercising parliamentary functions in Caracas, and Dinorah Figuera, who presides from exile over the body composed of the deputies elected in 2015, gave rise to the agenda subsequently announced.⠀⠀That agenda encompasses institutional reconstruction, the strengthening of the electoral system, the establishment of guarantees for political participation, and the restoration of civil liberties.⠀⠀The United States has formally adopted that agenda as a Venezuelan initiative directed toward a democratic transition.

The participation of the deputies elected in 2015 must nevertheless be understood within its constitutional limits.   Their presence identifies them as political interlocutors possessing an objectively ascertainable representative antecedent.   Claims have been advanced that their constitutional standing continued beyond the expiration of their elected term.   Those claims, however, do not themselves demonstrate the continuing representative mandate required by the Constitution.   Their participation therefore cannot, by itself, resolve the constitutional status of the body in whose name they act.

The negotiations simultaneously expose a second constitutional question.   If the displacement of the National Assembly elected in 2015 occurred without constitutional foundation, the title of the legislative body that replaced it necessarily becomes subject to the same inquiry.   A successor institution cannot derive constitutional validity from the unconstitutional displacement of its predecessor.   Its title must therefore be demonstrated independently rather than presumed from its continued exercise of legislative authority.

The consequence is that the negotiations bring together two legislative bodies whose constitutional situations remain unresolved for different reasons.   One asserts the continuation of a representative status requiring demonstration.   The other continues to exercise legislative authority under a title that likewise requires demonstration.   Neither circumstance is resolved by the passage of time, by the effective exercise of institutional power or by participation in a political agreement.   The burden of demonstration therefore applies equally to both.

The presidential election of July 28, 2024 occupies a different constitutional position.   It constitutes the most recent direct act through which the Venezuelan Nation attributed the Presidency of the Republic.   The voting records examined by independent observers demonstrate that Edmundo González Urrutia obtained the majority of the votes, while the National Electoral Council did not publish the disaggregated results necessary to substantiate its contrary announcement.   The constitutional period corresponding to that election remains in effect.

The announced negotiations may therefore contribute to constitutional restoration by facilitating the recovery of electoral guarantees, civic freedoms and the institutional conditions indispensable to the functioning of the Republic.   They cannot themselves constitute a new source of public authority or cure, by agreement alone, unresolved defects in title.   Their proper constitutional function, should they attain their declared objectives, would be to facilitate the effectiveness of the Nation’s most recent electoral act rather than substitute another title in its place.

Separately, reports indicate that authorities in Washington have examined a possible technical and financial framework through which the United States might contribute to Venezuela’s long-term reconstruction.   The proposal contemplates technical personnel, engineers and financial resources dedicated to rebuilding infrastructure and essential public services beyond the humanitarian relief already authorized following the recent earthquakes.   No public announcement, executive order, enacted appropriation or bilateral agreement has yet established that broader reconstruction framework as official policy.

Foreign technical assistance would be compatible with Venezuelan sovereignty only insofar as it remained subordinate to constitutionally attributable Venezuelan authority.   It could assist in rebuilding infrastructure, administering resources allocated for that purpose and restoring the operational capacity of public administration.   It could not independently determine the source of Venezuelan public authority or replace the attribution already expressed by the Nation through the presidential election of 2024.

The developments presently unfolding increasingly intersect with one another.   Political negotiations, diplomatic recognition, institutional accommodations, sanctions policy and proposals for material reconstruction no longer operate independently.   Each may appear justifiable when considered in isolation, particularly in light of Venezuela’s prolonged institutional deterioration and the humanitarian consequences recently aggravated by natural disaster.   Considered together, however, they may progressively shape a political settlement before the source of public authority has itself been determined.   In that event, the unresolved defect would risk becoming incorporated into the very institutions intended to restore the Republic.

The constitutional question therefore remains antecedent to every political arrangement that may emerge from these concurrent developments.   Neither political agreement, institutional continuity, the effective exercise of power, foreign assistance nor diplomatic recognition can supply the title that only the Nation itself is competent to attribute.   Urgency cannot eliminate uncertainty, nor can constitutional method guarantee the course of events.   It does, however, furnish the only criterion capable of distinguishing constitutional restoration from the consolidation of a new distribution of public authority.   The seriousness demanded by that inquiry cannot be presumed from negotiations principally designed to achieve political accommodation, immediate stability or material reconstruction.   It requires the prior and public demonstration of constitutional title.   Any arrangement proceeding without resolving that antecedent question would not overcome Venezuela’s constitutional crisis but instead transmit it into the future under a different institutional form.

Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania

July 18, 2026

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“Constitutional Title: Part Two”

July 11, 2026
Ricardo F. Morín
CGI, 2026

The Venezuelan constitutional controversy is not fundamentally a dispute over the exercise of governmental power.  It is a dispute over the constitutional attribution of authority.  By constitutional attribution of authority is meant the constitutional act through which public authority becomes publicly ascertainable and therefore juridically attributable to the sovereign Nation.  Until that antecedent question has been constitutionally resolved, proposals concerning transitional governments, constitutional amendment, constitutional reform, constituent power, or any other institutional arrangement remain incapable of establishing the constitutional title from which governmental authority itself derives.

The present analysis therefore proposes neither a governing junta, an interim presidency, a constitutional amendment, a constitutional reform, nor the convocation of a constituent assembly.  Each of those proposals may ultimately prove constitutionally sufficient or insufficient.  That question cannot be answered in the abstract.  Their constitutional validity depends upon antecedent conditions more fundamental than the institutional arrangements themselves.  The object of the present analysis is to identify the constitutional conditions by which every proposal intended to restore the constitutional attribution of governmental authority must ultimately be judged.

The constitutional attribution of governmental authority is no longer publicly ascertainable.  It has not been demonstrated that the existing constitutional organs retain the constitutional capacity to restore the constitutional conditions under which constitutional title may once again arise.  Nor has it been demonstrated that a transitional authority may itself acquire constitutional title before the restoration of those constitutional conditions constitutes the very purpose of its existence.  Equally unresolved is whether constituent power may be invoked while simultaneously claiming juridical continuity with the constitutional order established by the Constitution of 1999.  More fundamentally, constitutional theory has yet to demonstrate that any extra-constitutional arrangement can avoid reproducing the very constitutional defect it purports to remedy.  Under those circumstances, it necessarily remains unresolved whether the constitutional procedures governing amendment, reform, or any other mechanism established by the Constitution may validly be invoked by authorities whose own constitutional title forms part of the very controversy those procedures are expected to resolve.  From that constitutional uncertainty arises what may be described as the burden of constitutional demonstration.  By that expression is meant the obligation resting upon every claimant to constitutional authority to demonstrate that the constitutional conditions under which public authority may lawfully become publicly ascertainable and therefore juridically attributable to the Nation have in fact been satisfied.  That burden necessarily rests upon those who claim the authority to prescribe the constitutional means by which those conditions are to be restored.  Until it has been discharged, no institutional proposal may presume the constitutional legitimacy it seeks to establish.

Precisely because those antecedent questions remain unresolved, any proposal intended to restore the constitutional attribution of governmental authority must satisfy conditions arising from the nature of constitutional authority itself.  It cannot derive its legitimacy solely from political agreement, military success, diplomatic recognition, or practical necessity.  It cannot presume the constitutional title whose constitutional attribution remains unresolved.  It cannot exercise powers that presuppose the very authority whose constitutional attribution remains unresolved.   Nor can it substitute institutional convenience for the publicly verifiable manifestation of the Nation’s sovereign will.

Those constitutional conditions necessarily govern not only the constitutional sufficiency of every proposal for restoration but also the constitutional position of those entrusted with restoring them.  It is the constitutional recognition that the constitutional attribution of public authority, from which constitutional title alone may arise, is too fundamental to depend upon assumptions concerning the good faith of those temporarily exercising public authority.  The preservation of the integrity of constitutional title therefore requires objective constitutional safeguards.  Those entrusted with restoring the constitutional conditions under which constitutional title may once again arise cannot be permitted to exercise temporary authority under conditions that allow its continued possession to become indistinguishable from the constitutional title whose restoration constitutes the sole justification for its existence.  For that reason, the temporary exercise of public authority must remain confined to those acts strictly necessary to restore the constitutional conditions under which the sovereign will of the Nation may once again become publicly ascertainable.  Because temporary authority derives its constitutional justification exclusively from the restoration of constitutional conditions, its existence cannot extend beyond the fulfillment of that constitutional purpose.  Because constitutional title can arise only through a constitutional act that is publicly ascertainable, the process through which that act is made possible must itself remain transparent, publicly ascertainable, and independently verifiable.  Those entrusted with administering that process must therefore remain constitutionally incapable of deriving personal or political advantage from the constitutional title whose restoration they are charged with making possible.  Only under such conditions does the burden of constitutional demonstration remain objectively capable of being discharged.

The restoration of the constitutional attribution of governmental authority does not require the impossible expectation of politically neutral actors.  Constitutional government presupposes political plurality, and plurality necessarily entails competing interests among those entrusted with the exercise of public authority.  Conflict of interest is therefore not an accidental defect of democratic government but an inherent consequence of representative institutions.  The constitutional difficulty arises, not because public officials possess political commitments, but because those whose own constitutional title forms part of the controversy cannot alone furnish the constitutional demonstration by which that controversy is to be resolved.

The first objective is therefore neither the replacement of one government by another nor the immediate exercise of governmental power.  It is the re-establishment of the constitutional conditions under which the sovereign will of the Nation once again becomes publicly ascertainable through a transparent constitutional process capable of attributing public authority in a manner that is independently verifiable and binding upon all.  Only after those antecedent conditions have been restored may governmental authority once again become constitutionally attributable to the Nation.

The present analysis therefore advances no institutional blueprint.  It establishes the constitutional conditions by which every institutional proposal must be judged.  Whether the eventual solution assumes the form of a constitutional amendment, a constitutional reform, a constituent assembly, a transitional authority, or another institutional arrangement altogether, none may claim constitutional legitimacy until it satisfies those antecedent conditions under which constitutional title may once again arise.

Bala Cynwyd, Pensylvannia
July 11, 2026

Endnote:  

  • The Constitution of 1999 does not contemplate a “constitutional emergency” as an autonomous juridical institution or as a specific mechanism for the substitution or reorganization of public authority.  If the concept is employed in a strictly juridical sense, it requires an independent constitutional foundation.  If, on the contrary, it is used merely as a doctrinal description of a constitutional crisis, it cannot by itself produce the normative consequences later attributed to it.

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