The constituent, an old man who refuses to disappear
By: Luis Beltrán Guerra G. - 06/07/2025
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In this essay, it must be expressed as an unquestionable truth that very few people, if any, are unaware of the meaning of the word "constituent assembly." A majority, rather, knows what it refers to, admires it, respects it, and in some cases, even fears it, which is only logical given the reason for its existence and the magnanimous importance of its mission. Many, too, have become disenchanted with it.
The Royal Spanish Academy allows its use as an "adjective," since it "constitutes or establishes," but also as a "noun," since it integrates a composite entity. It is a component, an element. It gives the impression that even linguistics treats the "people" with admiration and respect, transformed into the creators of the "primary normative regime" according to which they would achieve their development, living in freedom while still fulfilling their obligations under the rule of law.
In a serious work from the University of Costa Rica, we read that "linguistics is a multidisciplinary science that investigates the origin, evolution, and structure of human language, seeking to facilitate understanding and communication through natural language. Indeed, this country is admired for its political and democratic stability, which has depended, as it has historically throughout the universe, on adherence to the preaching of "the constituent." It is written that "the Nicaraguans" proposed updating the superior normative regime in 1949, but instead ended up adapting that of their first "Magna Carta," that of 1871. The 1949 proposal was deemed "quite avant-garde." This is evidence of Costa Ricans' caution regarding the necessary constitutional stability, rarely respected in other latitudes. What is being paid attention to is rather an exaggerated normative dynamism, imbued with an evident populism.
The constituent process leads to the birth, by a people like a pregnant mother, of the "Law of Laws," which becomes its firstborn daughter. The father, as clearly known, is also "the people," whom "the constituent" comes to represent as his beloved offspring, but with the warning that the delegator will monitor him and be attentive to his ideas, and if they are negative, he is entitled to cause his death and even burial with the usual sermons. "The constituent" is, therefore, jealous of the task that the people have entrusted to the one or those to whom they have entrusted the rigorous application of the ordered articles of the current precepts so that, precisely, "we achieve respectable levels of political, economic, and social development." This is the path to their consolidation as stable and prosperous societies.
It's been said that even "glottology," that is, "the scientific study of languages, both in their structure and their history," has struggled to come to an understanding with "the Constituent." The latter, with an existence that is sometimes the son and sometimes even the father of humanity itself, is born out of the need to establish patterns for the latter to flourish, disciplining it, shaping it, transforming it into something quite similar to "a living being," since it is born, exists, and even dies. The architect of the Magna Carta has also been the victim of countless failings, just like the world itself. A variety of possibilities are unavoidable, derived from the relationship between him and society, to the point that if they were to meet to render an account, perhaps humanity would say to the Constituent, "I am your father," and the latter would contradict it by declaring that he is the father. Therefore, one could even speak of a "symbiosis," that is, "an association of individuals or plants of different species, especially if the symbionts benefit from living together" (Drae). It would not be rude or imprudent to refer to this assertion as "constitutional symbiosis."
It may seem obvious, but we should state that "the constituent assembly" has received more blows than a punching bag. However, linguistics, apparently, has been the least affected. Perhaps the hardest hit have been by the blows from its own creators. And in very few exceptions, due to legitimate, convenient, or necessary rationale. It is therefore not irrational to ask who has threatened whom more: the people the constituent assembly, or the latter the former? In our opinion, the latter the former.
The academic and former President of Ecuador, Rodrigo Borja, offers a serious analysis regarding the "constituent assembly," which the undersigned shares. He raises the need to take into account the distinction between "the constituent power and the constituted powers," that is, between "the sovereign will that created the original constitutional order, and therefore not subject to any prior norm, and the powers derived from that order, entirely subject to and regulated by it." The constituent power, being prior to the Constitution—since it is the body that created it—is not subject to it or to the legal order that derives from it. The constituted powers, on the other hand, are essentially conditioned and limited by the supreme constitutional order, since they emanate from it. Therefore, they are not permitted to do or command anything that has not been previously authorized by the so-called "Law of Laws," as well as by the mandates issued pursuant to it. In classrooms and academies, it is therefore often expressed that "the Constitution is the mother of all laws." It is its primary and highest source, and all lower-ranking provisions must conform to it, or they will be invalid.
These assessments nevertheless find their rationale in real criteria, but also in technical ones, which reveal complications in the composition of the "constituent assembly," among others: 1. Constituent power resides in the people; 2. It is a power, imbued with maximization, whose exercise we exercise through our political representatives; 3. We as a people never deprive ourselves of this power, and therefore retain the legitimacy to revoke it and entrust it to other representatives. That is, it belongs to us for our entire existence. It is therefore correct to be clear, as we read, that the “adjective or noun” “constituent” (depending on how it is used) must be located as “a word or a group of words within a sentence, which can be separated because it has a unitary behavior and maintains hierarchical relationships in a given sentence (in technical language “a phrase” (a word or group of words that is articulated around a nucleus and that can perform some syntactic function), with the warning that it must be determined “whether a nominal phrase has the quality of constituent”.
In this regard, we hear that a "constituent assembly" is "the citizen people," who entrust the assembly with drafting a constitution on their behalf in order to outline a suitable political organization for the consolidation of that people into a "republic," as we read, "a form of government characterized by the division of powers of the State, within the framework of an elective, representative, alternative, and responsible political regime." However, for Borja, this is a victim of misunderstandings that led to the confusion of "the republic" with the concepts of "state" and "government." The eminent jurist even attributes to Aristotle the mistaken identification of the republic as a "form of government." This was not the case for Plato, who used it as a synonym for the State, evidence of which is the title of his prestigious book "The Republic."
The constitution generated by the constituent assembly would then contain "a system of government and organization of the State" structured according to the guidelines of democracy and the so-called liberal principles, including: 1. Citizens, without exception, are equal before the law; 2. They, and only they, elect their representatives by vote. The determining principle? "Sovereignty resides in the people," so that citizens, corporations, and the like must submit to the power they wield. But also, for obvious reasons, the authorities, without distinction. This last mention contrasts with reality in a few countries—many more than we imagine—with constitutions, but where such strange situations occur that it is the provisions of public power that prevail over the provisions of the constituent assembly. The sanction for this assumption, at least in the literal sense, is that a violation of the "Magna Carta" has occurred. For a few, moreover, direct or consequent victims of the majority of those alarmed by justice, convinced of a "consuetudine," they limit themselves to nodding their heads from left to right, evidence of "conformity" and even "loss of hope." This has always been the case, and it will continue to be the case, is what can be inferred from that gesture.
An essay of this type cannot end without referring to “good and bad constitutions,” a classification that depends on a variety of reasons, including the most common and those concerning the good and bad interests of the constituent power: 1. Regarding the nomenclature, changing the word “Congress” to “National Assembly,” as happened in Venezuela following the rise to power of Colonel Hugo Chávez, who found in prominent academics reasons to repeal the democratic constitution of 1961, despite the decades of validity and under whose regime the country reached stages of political stability and economic and social progress never seen before. 2. We read regarding the Pennsylvania Constitution, inspired, as noted, by Thomas Paine, whose fifth article, in its declaration of rights, stated: “Government is, or ought to be, instituted for the common good, protection, and security of the people, nation, or community; and not for the particular emolument or profit of any man or family who are a part of that community. The Community has the right undoubted, inalienable and irrevocable right to reform, alter or abolish the government in the way that the former deems best satisfies the common good” and 3. Constitutions described as voluminous, essentially demagogic. A final question would seem to be: What is the best constitution? “The good one that is applied” could be an answer.
We finally express that the Venezuelan jurist Carlos Ayala Corao, with regard to our country, was the coordinator of the research "Presidentialism vs. Parliamentarism?", in which professors Juan Linz, Dieter Nohlen, Néstor Pedro Sagúes, Humberto Noguera and Francisco Jose Eguiguren Praeli participated. Professor Ayala refers to the advantages and disadvantages of presidentialism, political agreement and governability of democracy and alternative institutional models, priority topics for a next constitution, which would be number 27, since "the republic" has tried on 26 occasions to reach an agreement between the people as constituent, the constituent assembly and regarding a definitive implementation of a Magna Carta to definitively take root as a democratic and social republic.
Dear readers, there are apparently sufficient reasons to justify the expression "The constituent, an old man who refuses to disappear."
The reader please help us to decipher the mess.
«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».