Several Venezuelan and foreigner bloggers agreed today on posting about the upcoming Constitutional Reform as one voice, with different shades, of course. Perhaps my post it's one of the latest, since I can't post at work so I had to wait to come back home at night, my apologies... Now I thought I had a million words to say about the reform; I even spend a few paragraphs on explaining just one article sometime ago. But today I would like to focus on a "non politically correct" issue about this reform. A few days ago I went to my university - UCAB - to give a class. Before entering my classroom, I saw a lot of people painting their shapes with chalks in the floor as they were the shapes of death people and they were supossed to write inside their shapes things that could end for sure with the reform. None of them wrote anything particularly original: "freedom", "democracy", "property", "free thinking"... even "milk"! (well, the foreigners might be amused by this, but we are used to a very rough milk shortage these days). A friend asked me if she could make my shape in the floor; so I laid down partially worried by the marks the chalk could leave on my black outfit. Then I stood up, and wrote inside my shape "University Autonomy" and my friend sighted.. "Oh... you are right about that one"
The modification of the article 109 in regards to the University Autonomy establish that the vote inside the universities should be equal for professors, students and even workers at campus. That among other serious things. So when A student who works partial time, came to my office asking me about this issue in particular all I could answer was "The university is not democratic. It is based on merits, not on populism"- The guy looked at me as he was trying to assure that I actually said that, no one likes to hear that not all things are democratic.
Everybody wants to talk about democracy, everybody wants to talk about possibilities, and everyone wants to talk about easy things to get, without any effort but rather just for the fact of "being there" (being part of the country, of the university...). But this time, I feel forced to talk about the things that should not be said, instead of buying this "Disneyland" offer. I'm forced to talk about consequences, paths, and efforts. About why beyond the obvious, this blogger wont cheer that shopping mall.
Many seem to ignore that democracy does haves a dark side and it is the tyranny of the majority. A world where everybody rules must be certainly the same world where none of that collective we call "everybody" truly rules at all.
This reform will make the opinions of the students (and specially the first year ones, which are always the majority inside universities, at least here) more important than the opinion of the - obviously more experienced- professors. Therefore it will exclude the ones who really have conquer more knowledge by experience from the possibility of spreading that knowledge. The university will become a paradise for useful idiots who are going to be ready to create rules to eliminate the rough demands of the finals in order to preserve the "student interest"... No one would rule except the ones who makes enough votes to pursue this "interest" and by looking after that interest the university will stop being a university. I'm not saying the students don't know what's best for them, I'm saying that the majority are not usually passionate intellectuals looking for knowledge and more often than not, they come to the classrooms looking for something else.
Many people talk about the non-democratic issues concerning the reform. And they are many, like the fact the president will reach the possibility of be reelected indefinitely (like a monarch) and that he will accurate more power toward many institutions including the "Central Bank", my city, and so on. But I rarely see any arguments against those tiny issues that could be called as the "democratic part of the reform". But those are only dresses, made by taking the democracy principles to the last consequences until turning it into a vague populist promise that in the name of inclusion, would only bring backwardness to my dear country.
Therefore, I will vote against this reform next Sunday not just because the things I could lose, but also because the things I could earn without being able to handle with them (such as the possibility of making my vote in the university worth the same as my professors vote). I'm not voting "NO" because I could lose my properties (by the way, I don't have any properties...) but because I could have a lot of properties without even making the less effort to get them. I'm not voting "NO" because the president could make me less free, I'm voting "NO" because I didn't grow up as a spoiled chick and I'm not planning to start being one now.
I'm voting NO because I'm so f... stubborn that I want to be able to vote at 18 and not at 16 and I want to earn my money and pay for my home and not to get it as a present from Daddy Chavez. I'm so f... masochist that I'm voting NO because I truly think that my work can be done better if I have 8 hours a day for making it, instead of 6... I'm voting NO because the only gift I want is the possibility of learning and improving.
I'm voting NO because this reform might be too good; by promising a life so perfect, that I would lose the need of moving a finger for anything and I'm afraid to become some couch potato (besides, I have always disliked perfection). I'm voting NO because I don't want no one to give me a Disney Land, I'm voting NO to pursue my right to build it on my own.
It might be an odd argument against the reform, but those are my reasons, and this is my blog.