Understand how NGOs have changed and why...
Published at: 09/02/2024 03:50 PM
Non-Governmental Organizations (
NGOs), since their creation, have served as a tool to
undermine governments and destabilize Peoples.
According to
research called Political Opinion carried out in
2014 by the Opinion Study Center of the University
of Antioquia, Colombia, it is considered that “NGOs , in their different expressions, or organizational
forms, assume the status of political subject and therefore
constitute themselves as a subject of power, while opinion The purpose of public
broadcasting is, overtly or covertly, not only to question the management and
representation of the political sectors that hold the constituted power,
but also to seek to create crises of illegitimacy that could cause its fall”.
In the above-mentioned
research, it was also explained that NGOs
since their inception “have come a long way to achieve the
position they show today within the international organization system.
Year after year, they have increased their presence on the global,
regional and national public spectrum, taking on significant roles in the implementation
of initiatives related to the international agenda, including: scientific exchange, religion, emergency aid, humanitarian
affairs, the defense of democratic systems and rights, the
defense of human rights, the fight against drug consumption and trafficking”.
However, this has been an excuse to enter into communities, as confirmed by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, in his speech at the World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland, on January 29, 2009, when he said, “but this position in the international system has not only been the sole will of NGOs. ; this has been decisively influenced by the intentionality of the imperialist powers that, in defense of their economic, political and cultural interests in all their areas of domination, have advocated guaranteeing it a space, with the right to a voice, veto and funding in the wide spectrum of commissions, organizations, bodies and missions of an international nature”.
Venezuela
and NGOs
If in 1909 there were about 200 international NGOs registered with the United Nations
(UN) and in mid-1990 there were more than 2,000, currently, the UN has a record of 20,000 as associates, of
which 70 are from the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela, according to the data reflected in its files.
Among those 70
Venezuelan NGOs registered with the United Nations, the Venezuelan Network of
Organizations for Social Development (REDSOC) stands out, which was created under the
auspices of one of the country's main economic empires (Grupo
Cisneros) and has played a leading role in several actions and key moments of the destabilizing strategies of the opposition right wing in our country, which
also enjoy the open and shameless support of
international organizations with a political bias, particularly the UN and the OAS.
In a research
carried out by sociologist Gladys Rojas,
called “Metamorphosis of NGOs: The Socio-Political Role of NGOs in the Bolivarian
Republic of Venezuela during the period 1999-2014” at the School of Social Management of the Ministry of Popular Power of Planning, we found
that “during the rise of NGOs in the country, large national
economic groups are the largest shareholders and that, in addition to controlling and owning
private ownership of most of the large companies in the
industrial, commercial, telecommunications, publishing and transport sectors in general,
among others, they also begin their incursion into the world of non-profit
associations, using the figure of foundations, anointed with good
intentions to help and favor those who keep chained to
poverty, exploitation and extreme social exclusion while accumulating
enormous capital, increasing their private properties and strengthening their neocolonial
relations with the transnational corporations of the imperial blocs”.
Later, the sociologist Rojas explained in her
document
that “the emergence of NGOs during the so-called governments of the Fourth Republic is not
the real reason for the urgent needs of the most impoverished
sectors, but rather the protection of the interests of
large national and imperial economic groups, is just as the Boulton family created the John Boulton Foundation in 1950; the Mendoza Goiticoa family founded the Eugenio Mendoza Foundation in November 1951; later the Cisneros Phelps family formed the Cisneros Foundation
; and the Capriles family
created the Cadena Capriles Foundation in
2004.”
Knowing this origin, this is how the
new NGOs that now act as belligerent political
subjects in the current national public dynamic are
born, developed, expanded, branched and articulated in a network of networks, the sociologist explained in her research.
The Fourth Republic for NGOs
Undoubtedly, the
period of boom of NGOs in
our country was that of representative democracy, which was inaugurated with the
well-known Punto Fijo Pact, which ran from 1958 to 1998, when Commander Hugo Chávez defeated
the right-wing candidate
in the presidential elections that year.
Taking up the research
of sociologist Gladys Rojas,
known as “Metamorphosis of NGOs:
The Socio-Political Role of NGOs in the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela
during the period 1999-2014”, she commented that during these 40 years, NGOs underwent several mutations
, fulfilling different functions according to the orientation or purpose assumed at each time.
However, the researcher explained that “these
organizations play the role of an instrument of class domination in favor of the
oligarchy and the private owners of the means of production has
remained unchanged to this day and that those 40 years were the
gestation and deployment of neoliberal theses in our country, which reached
their greatest development with the offensive taken on by the financial and
commercial sector of the Creole bourgeoisie through the process known as the Reform of the State.”
Thus, we found that in the
development of the inquiries carried out by the sociologist Rojas that “one of the main theses during the
80s, the bourgeoisie, in the midst of the neoliberal renaissance, in order to correct
hypertrophy, control omnipresence and minimize public spending by the State,
proposed a new pact that would reinforce the representative democratic system,
allowing spaces for participation to the so-called civil society, with which it was sought
incorporate the professional
sectors of the middle class and their political representations into the puntofijista pact: the parties and movements
of the center-right and the reformist left. In this way, in order to make
headway in political dynamics and compete with better options in
electoral processes in the face of Democratic Action and COPEI, they dedicated themselves to creating civil society movements
.”
Behind these movements of the 80s, the new non-governmental
organizations of 2000 were forged as political subjects with
leadership, corporate culture, cellular branching and their own political agenda.
It is then that “since the
year 2000 (prior to the oil strike of 2001 and the coup d'etat of 2002), the political
agenda, disguised as complaints from NGOs, foundations and civil associations, precedes, accompanies or
reinforces the agenda of political and social destabilization of the right, in a permanent nourishment of the media agenda
deployed by the printed and audiovisual media, as well as through the social networks present in the national territory and
mainly on the
North American and European scene,” said researcher Rojas.
The sociologist also emphasized
that “when we refer to the active political agenda of these organizations,
we are pointing to the constant issuance of political public opinion carried out by
a group of NGOs through the
media and social networks, where the management of
any of the powers of the State or of the ministerial bodies and
agencies of the Bolivarian government is attacked, and they actively participate in coup plans and actions.
destabilizing against national peace”.
For all these years,
the Bolivarian Government has been accusing and denouncing the actions of these organizations, and
as the researcher said, “they hide behind the symbols, the
organizational structure and the operators of church power,
private economic power and political organizations of the center or extreme right.
However, the time has come to go beyond the opening of
investigations or the conformity of public complaints to reveal
actions that seek to erode credibility and institutional legitimacy to
provoke a state of absolute ungovernability that will eventually serve to
justify insurrectional action against the rule of law.”
These are some of the reasons why the need to approve and apply laws that regulate the actions of NGOs in Venezuela is important, in order to follow up on these organizations that receive illegal foreign funding and are used to destabilize the country.
AMELYREN BASABE//MAZO WRITING