Legitimacy is the ethical justification for the origin of power, the exercise of political command, the provenance and application of the law or any other act of public authority. Here we see the PRD Electoral Committee resolution, calling for a meeting that violated the health decrees, signed by among others Health Minister Rosario Turner.
Legitimacy crisis
by Miguel Antonio Bernal
The first thing is to keep in mind that legitimacy encompasses a whole system of values. It’s an agreement about principles of social ethics, which are above the law.
It should be noted that the legal is not always the legitimate. The legal is what agrees with the law, yes, but in our society we see how, more and more, the laws obey selfish and minority interests.
In these twelve months, the government of President Laurentino Cortizo Cohen has been losing its legitimacy, of electoral origin. The loss has been through its exercise of power – all the corruption and incompetence, in addition to its anti-popular and anti-national actions. That’s apart from the long chain of abuses of authority practiced with the excuse of the pandemic.
It’s our civic obligation to diagnose and expose this legitimacy crisis so that we can achieve a solution that is most favorable to citizen participation and to the urgent needs of the great majority, which is distributed among the middle classes and the rural and urban workers.
The most favorable way out of the legitimacy crisis supports the demands for employment, food, health and citizen security, which are being ignored by those in power.
We must bear in mind that constitutional problems are not problems of a legal nature, but of power. A true constitutional change is urgently needed, through a constituent process with full citizen participation. It’s the most democratic way to get out of the bog in which we are mired.
As citizens with dignity and democratic convictions, we must ensure that public opinion rejects the government’s authoritarian measures. We must seriously consider the a democratizing transitional government, with a pact among all sectors that are unhappy with this failed regime. They did not come to rule, but to steal.
The way out of the legitimacy crisis is none other than to convene a Constituent Assembly. That task cannot be left to the current legislators, the current administration, or the current leadership of the political parties.
The time has come for citizens to defend our social, economic and political rights. We cannot continue in the hands of those who would be our executioners, who would profit at our expense of the sweat, tears and pain.
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