[If participatory democracy is to offer an alternative it must rise to the direst of challenges. In Venezuela, where the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution explicitly aims to create a "democratic, participatory and self-reliant" society, yet over 100,000 people were killed in a decade, this challenge is insecurity.]
Battling Murder in Venezuela's Participatory Republic
May 28th 2009, by George Gabriel - OpenDemocracy.net
Increasingly, the Left's response to representative institutional frameworks - "participatory democracy" - demands a further empowerment of the people, the antidote to an at times suffocating conglomeration of modern elites. This suffocation gave birth to the Venezuelan Caracazo in 1989, where in response to popular protest against the imposition of neo-liberal reforms the security forces massacred Caracas slum dwellers in their homes. If participatory democracy is to offer an alternative it must rise to the direst of challenges. In Venezuela, where the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution explicitly aims to create a "democratic, participatory and self-reliant" society, yet over 100,000 people were killed in a decade, this challenge is insecurity.
Professor Ross Hastings of Ottawa University identifies three determinants of a person's engagement in criminal activity: personal disposition, personal situation, and lack of fear of the justice system. In Venezuela, with poverty halved since 2003, the stand out cause of homicides must be considered the impunity with which they are carried out. Barely 3% of murders result in a sentence. Yonny Campos, Commissioner of the Caracas-wide Metropolitan Police explains, "they commit homicides, 2,3,15,20, and no one denounces them, no one chases them, no one takes action."
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