The rights of political participation in the origins of Venezuelan constitutionalism

Abstract

The first time that the representation of the people is mentioned, it occurs as a consequence of the formation of the Junta de Caracas in which it was indicated that said body should have a representation of the “people”. Once the Board was constituted, it called elections to configure a constituent process, through an Election Regulation. The aforementioned document starts from a defense of the principles of political participation and representative democracy, by majority system to plurality of votes. Suffrage is census and capacity, with great economic restrictions. Representative Democracy is proclaimed in the text of 1811, which uses the term People and not Nation, establishing indirect voting and census suffrage, for economic reasons, both active and passive. In the call to the constitutional process of 1812, as well as in the constitutional text of 1819, the concept is introduced that the deputies elected to Congress will not only be representatives of their province, but of the entire Nation, maintaining the same criteria on suffrage than the previous text.