Venezuela Passes Law Banning GMOs, by Popular Demand

Saturday, January 2, 2016
By Paul Martin

By William Camacaro, Frederick B. Mills, and Christina M. Schiavoni
Global Research
January 02, 2016

The National Assembly of Venezuela, in its final session before a neoliberal dominated opposition takes the helm of legislative power on January 5, passed one of the most progressive seed laws in the world on December 23, 2015; it was promptly signed into law by President Nicolas Maduro. On December 29, during his television show, “In Contact with Maduro, number 52,” Maduro said that the new seed law provides the conditions to produce food “under an agro-ecological model that respects the pacha mama (mother earth) and the right of our children to grow up healthy, eating healthy.” The law is a victory for the international movements for agroecology and food sovereignty because it bans transgenic (GMO) seed while protecting local seed from privatization. The law is also a product of direct participatory democracy –the people as legislator– in Venezuela, because it was hammered out through a deliberative partnership between members of the country’s National Assembly and a broad-based grassroots coalition of eco-socialist, peasant, and agroecological oriented organizations and institutions. This essay provides an overview of the phenomenon of people as legislator, a summary of the new Seed Law, and an appendix with an unofficial translation of some of the articles of the law.

The People as Legislator of Seed Policy

The Legal Basis

The Seed Law is a glowing example of the legal personality of popular power (poder popular) at work in Venezuela, the people as legislator. As Article 5 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela indicates, “Sovereignty resides intransferable in the people, who exercise it directly as provided for in this Constitution and in the law, and indirectly, through suffrage . . . .” An example of the direct legislative powers of citizens is found in Article 204, no. 7 of the Constitution which specifically names citizens as potential legislators, should they organize a petition of at least one percent of the registered voters (see also Article 205). There are also numerous references to the legislative power of communal structures in the organic Laws of Popular Power (Poder Popular) passed in 2009 and 2010.

The Rest…HERE

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