American Constitution: Colombia Political Constitution of 1991
The process of deepening democracy is the result of processes that arose in the demonstration of different social actors, which claimed institutional participation or visibility;Its development led to a variety of results, which even, in some processes, reach constitutional reforms or substitutions (Perbellini, 2012). Origin of a true citizen participation and real way of exercising citizenship for a participatory democracy and the formation of a social state of law.
The transformations that happened were identified as democratic transition processes, in which different countries chose to open political participation to political actors that at a previous time did not have representation (of Sousa, 2014), as in Colombia, where fromThe National Constituent Assembly of 1991 The Colombian political system was made more participatory based on the inclusion of different actors who did not have the possibility of participating in the conformation and decision of the order and end of the State before;through a process of rupture of the traditional representation and unidirectional relationship State – Civil Society according to Boaventura de Sousa (2006) and that is evidenced in what author calls semiperiferic societies. In the following text, the way in which the constituent power would be seen as social power in Colombia would be reflected.
In constitutional transformations, the mechanism that intervenes is the constituent and with this the constituent power that can reformulate the legal-political system of a society, at the time it considers it (Holmes, 1999) being the final cause and end ofThe Constitution: the people or also said the constituent power, nevertheless there is a tendency to think that democracy is the result of the normative consensus given in the Constitution. According to the way this is achieved, it gives rise to debates regarding its legitimacy and validity in the legal system, it seems then that this is a debate that incumbent only to constitutionalism and its writers outside the people as such.
But, conceiving it in this way can lead to that the constituent subject is not the one who determines the basic norm and does not found the legal system, so figures such as the constituent power would become fictions by removing all credit to the constituent power. As a criticism of this position of conception and formation of the Boaventura de Sousa (2006) and Hésper Pérez (S.F.), they argue, that democracy reflected in the Constitution that supports it, is not the result of state institutional arrangements, nor, the dialogue between constitutionalists, but the result of an empowered constituted power through participation and representation.
Even when the plot defense of the Constitution is maintained today as a text whose legality rests in its ability to have legal validity, it cannot be ignored that the constitutional arrangements that, in recent decades have happened in Colombia, were builtUnder a much more progressive perspective, whose contents converge towards what he raises in this way of recognizing Colombia as a social state of law.
This progressivity in the rights whose purposes tend for the egalitarian participation of all parties, in the instances of institutional decision, very much in the hands of the modes of social power production that Boaventura de Sousa (2006) stands out.
In this sense, the Political Constitution of Colombia of 1991 establishes the sovereignty of the people as a primary political element on which the political-legal relationship of the nation emerges, with this demanding the role of constituent power as a determinant of the direction of the socio-organization-Juride of Colombian society that, among other things, demystify the imperative construction of a social order based on division, and if you want, subjugation, of the popular power against the State. Citizen participation also seen in the exercise of the vote;that plays an important role despite this issue would lead to another interesting discussion that would lead to another writing but can be emphasized as Peralta (2010) all citizen participation demands political participation because it is supposed to really have an intervention of citizenship in the citizenship in thepublic decision making and could not occur outside the exercise of political power,
Finally, some reflections as a conclusion, first, the constituent power as an important form of citizen participation must have a close relationship with the constituted (normative) order otherwise, to the extent that it ignores participation and representation in consensus, it canBe permeated by the interest of individual transformation according to interests, which generally happens, with the use of violence as a mechanism of dispute that we have lived and we currently live and here other debates arise such as the legitimacy that these ways of fact have.
Second, the relationship set for consideration can also be raised as a latent conflict that summons the political variety in the formation of political institutionality, to the extent that the representation and participation of the different actors is achieved more or less satisfactorySocial and political, creating in this regard a better constitutional and institutional harmony through the construction of consensus that unfortunately in Colombia after the 1991 Constitution is not reflected, on the contrary it is sought to discredit it and dismantle it and as Boaventura de Sousa mentions (2006) on the modernity of the constitutional state with its unified legal system are a reflection of private and particular interests that respond to the economic.
All of the above leads us to reflect on the importance of active and conscious citizen participation in order to influence public decisions but cannot be taken from political participation is our true social power for a true democracy, we are all and all of us and allWe should participate in its regulation, conformation and operation.
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