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have if we want to involve the current government; that we should introduce into our current
Constitution articles that protect individual rights
and fundamental freedoms. According to them,
this is the only way to ensure that Community
Party, pro-revolutionaries don’t block democratic
reforms while they, too, start to accept ideals such
as tolerance of and respect for other ways of conceiving and thinking a society’s political and social organization through law.
Nevertheless, the idea that using the 1976 Constitution as a base for constitutional change has
more risks than opportunities or benefits was prioritized. One of the risks suggested was that the
group in power be re-legitimized within a constitutional framework, as the historic platform of the
nation’s traditional politics. It was deduced that
there would be a problem with legitimizing political pluralism, and other groups and actors, if this
were done, simply because real power and will
directly or indirectly define the rules of our coexistence.
Having said this, it was considered that political
realism certainly imposes the admission of viewpoints from those who hold power and those who
support them. They suggested that this should be
understood as the need to accept certain articles
from the current Constitution that they themselves have interpretive flexibility for all citizens.
Another interesting focus suggested that the best
strategy seems to be to clearly reveal to the citizenry the weak points in the 1976 Constitution, so
its natural incapacity to be reformed in a democratic direction become evident. In other words,
even if it is our right to opt for reforming the current Constitution, as way to demonstrate the democratic character of our debate, this does not mean
that the very same cannot reveal the fact that said
Constitution will not serve certain goals. The fact
that it is used as the law in a totalitarian State technically and morally invalidates it as a source for
rights and legality. This brings an important thing
to mind: the government itself has been talking
about the need to reform the Constitution. If this
has any importance at all, we should assume and
understand that the government itself admits that
its Constitution has shortcomings, beyond just
whether or not it is respected, or whether the authorities have applied it or not.
Of course, we could not speak of a Constitution
for all, nor would this be sufficiently realistic
given the obvious presence of those in power if
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