The Nigerian Bar Association warns FIRS over the amendment of VAT laws, while court has ordered Lagos and Riverstays to maintain status quo, plus National Security Advisor General Baba Ganamongono warns IPAP to stay clear of a number of elections and we also are going to be examining the sit-at-home order. This is PlusPolitik and I am Mary Annacolm. The Nigerian Bar Association and prominent senior lawyers have warned the Federal Government and the Federal Inland Revenue Service the National Assembly against any illegality in the agreed to amend the value-added tax law in the country. Also, the Lagos State House of Assembly passes the State's Value-Added Tax Bill into law. The Court of Appeal has ordered both Rivers and Lagos States to maintain status quo on the collection of value-added tax. Now, this all sounds like a lot, but joining us to discuss and break this down is Barista Jire O'Logan and Economist and Co-Founder of Awaba Nigeria, Tunji Andrews. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for joining us. Thank you for having me. Great. So I'm going to start with you, Tunji, because this sounds like a lot. A lot of people are wondering why, you know, Rivers State, then Lagos States and other states are at some form of a loggerhead with the Federal Government over VAT. A lot of people are paying VAT, but they really do not understand what it is. So help us break down this conversation, especially why it has gotten to this point, where states are asking the Federal Government to refund. So let's start with the conversation around the fact that this is VAT-Valuated Tax and it's a tax that is paid on activity, business activity, basically, buying and selling of certain items. The general problem and the reason why we're here is because of the laws. They are meant to be laws that speak directly to VAT in Nigeria that should have been enacted or put into the Constitution of the country. But it doesn't seem to mention it. The Constitution goes very silent on what VAT is or who should collect it or in what circumstances should it be collected. So what we are seeing is a situation whereby the states have gone to the courts to determine the fact that since it is not in the recurrent list or the concurrent list, it is being viewed as a reschedule. And that means, or at least in the eyes of the court, it means that the states should collect it. The thing I do see, and for me I think it's a big assumption by most of the states, there is the thought that if we collect the VAT in our domain, it means a lot more money for us. And especially because so the major states pushing it seem to have a lot of economic activity within their domains and specifically river states and Lagos states. But they must also remember that the fact that, let me say MTN for instance is headquartered in Lagos doesn't generally mean that all the activities of MTN across the 36 states of the country plus the FCT happen in Lagos. So it means that if this law is to go through and all the states are to pass on their own VAT laws, that means MTN would have to split his VAT into 37 bits and then pay each state its due as at what it gets from each domain. Also the federal government would have to look at it from the perspective that if the states are deciding to keep their VAT, then the federal government too should keep its VAT, which it collects of issues like importation and the rest, which of course is a major part to what is being shared. So for me, I think we need to either go to the constitution and properly create a law. Of course, this is what you're speaking about with the lawyers are saying the federal government should not do it back channel situation. I think we should have more engagement, but I think the bigger part is I would rather prefer everybody stay and let the full matter be decided. Instead of going ahead to say, okay, now start paying VAT to us as a state because this raises confusion for companies. If a company decides that, okay, the state says stop paying me VAT and the company starts paying VAT to the state and then it is determined in three months time that you should pay to the federal government. That means what the company paid in VAT to the state, it's not the double payment. So it's a big issue. I think we should let it be fully defined by the courts or the National Assembly via the constitution of the federal public of Nigeria. Barso Logo, I mean, he's talking about the courts here. Now according to the law passed by the Lagos Assembly on Thursday, the value added tax would be administered by the Lagos State Internal Revenue Service as we know the LIRS at the rate of 6%. Now do you think that this rate of course is delivered judging by the FRIS 7.5% because he's saying that the courts need to decide this. Is it something that you think is within the jurisdiction of the courts? I believe it's like an incentive to quickly generate a lot of revenue through the value added tax. Now that's a coconut weekend, it's raising the trick of challenging the federal framework around it. But let's leave the foundation to why we are here. If you look at the statistics that came out of the National Bureau of Statistics, Nigeria generated a total of 1.53 trillion Naira revenue from value added tax 2020 and up by 29.3% when you compare it to the 1.18 trillion Naira recorded in 2019. And of course, that was also an improvement on the 1.11 trillion Naira generated in 2018. And the position of Government K before we went to call this back, okay, if in my state, I rule out contracts of about 200 billion Naira and you expect that contractors with value added tax of the federal government from this contract, what about states that are not willing to have contracts? So where do I, if I have to pay that chance to the federal government, where do I find money to develop my state, knowing that I'm involved in a lot of projects there? And the argument also, legal states tap into either time. If we are contributing so much to the federal government and we get a policy, hence we go and begin to challenge this type of school. And don't forget that we came from the angle of the limit. We are going to look at the law because he has found a lacuna. What we call a lacuna in law is a gap in the law. So let's go back to the history of value added tax. Countries introduced value added tax when they attacked regime. It's all satisfactory. And in the case of Nigeria, it was introduced in 1993 by the military government then. And sales tax was on adjudication of the states before then, but only administered. And that law has been amended several times. And then what people are saying generally is that we feel the impact of these enormous tax that we generate in the society. And here we are now. You need to also cast your mind back to what happened recently in the country when NMP came out to tell the world that the federation account will be expecting zero remittance. And it is from that federation account that money is distributed to the states. So the states found themselves being confronted with this, you know, an impending stagnancy and serious crisis. So they began now to look around for how to remain viable. And as of today, I think about three states in Nigeria have gotten the clean slate, the clean certificate of being viable in operational performance. So where do you go from there? We're going to start the state. And the states are now saying let's begin to restructure this country, perhaps starting from the tax structures that we have. And that if you now get interested in mobilizing tax in the environment, then you encourage industrialization. Don't forget the internal state, for example, according to the law, which tends to work Islamic adoption. That's set of alcohol. Oh, come on. You're going to make that case that Governor Mikkei made, really? Exactly. You know, so if I bring in tax from the consumption of alcohol in my state and you want to collect it and you don't allow it, and you want to share this 22% tax on alcohol.  This is BFVAT. So we'll share BFVAT. It doesn't work that way. I mean, he was only just trying to, you know, botch us a point. But I don't think that that's how these monies are being shared. But just hold that thought. Let me go back to Tunji. Tunji, let's put back that graphics on the screen. We see that in all of the monies that is being taken by the federal government and states, states are taking 50% of V-18. Local governments earn 35%. And then 15% goes to the federal government. So the states still seem to have more in terms of the sharing formula. Or maybe I'm just looking at it from a layman's perspective. Absolutely, you are right. And it's the conversation I had earlier to the impression of most states about what they are pushing. So for instance, the federal government actually contributes more to that kitty than the states. So it is a case where the federal government puts in about 40% to 50%, but only takes out 15%. Think about it. So if the federal government believes the states want to keep their own part of it, then the federal government too should keep its own. Now, also, there is the conversation around who owns what V-18 in what territory. That is very critical. Because if, for instance, the River State Governor is speaking about the V-18, it must be clear that the V-18 will only apply to economic activity that happens within his state. Now, we must also remember that the headquarters of most of the economic activity that happens within his state do not actually reside within his state. So I don't think we've thought this true properly. I don't think as states we've looked at how it is. Now, I must be honest about one thing. It is unfair for a River State, for instance, to be generating a lot and share almost equally with a state somewhere in the country that isn't generating quite as much. I agree with that. And those are conversations that need to be had. And I honestly believe that we should restructure the way V-18 is being collected. But in this conversation of what we do in our state is our own and let everybody just go and face theirs, it will bring up more than we thought about. It will definitely bring up more than we thought about. In fact, as a part of the fact, all the headquarters of the businesses that are situated in River State are in Lagos. I'm not sure he's actually thought about that. And the economic activity actually happens in Lagos. So the question is, who will they pay the V-18 to? So for me, I think it's a question of let's look at it in a proper perspective. And let's also look at it from the perspective of passing a proper law that is fair and equitable, as against, I guess, of course, in the way that if one entity has gone in the very extreme of the opposite, the first thing you do to bring them back to the table is to go to the other extreme. But I think where we need to come to is that middle point where we all agree that, first of all, the law, for instance, what we're working with in this context is actually a decree from, I think, 1993, which was a military decree. So we need to create one under our democratic dispensation, which is equitable, which is fair, and which works for not just the federal government and the states, but also works for the local governments. Interesting. And you see, in all of this was, in all of this, the conversation that we're having, local governments haven't really said anything. It's just the state governors who seem to be, you know, making most of the noise.  We're still looking at the law here. In Lagos State, section 16, subsection two of the law here requires that an importer of taxable goods pay the tax on the goods to the LIRS on the tax on goods. So before clearing these goods, you have to pay that tax. So how do you think this is going to be implemented? Plus the fact that we're having this in Broglieu between the federal government and the state governments when we already have that law? As of now, you know, let's look at what happened in Riba State. In the case of Atangera, or Riba State, plus those federal inland revenue studies and the Atangera of the Federation. The concept that taxis, such as value added tax, holding tax, tertiary education tax, and the national information, the cost development agency left amongst others that are not listed on that item 58 and 59 are outside the jurisdiction of the federal government of Nigeria. So there is a gap in the operational law already. And the court further noted that if you look at the provisions of item seven, A and B, or part two of the second share of the position of Nigeria, you know. It does not extend the legislative contents of the National Assembly beyond capital gains. So these things are there. So right now, it's like trying to correct a Laguna. And what the federal government is doing, talking about FIRAs, is to proceed to the court of appeal. As we speak now, the judgements in Riba State stands. And Riba State that has power to make laws within her jurisdiction has come up with laws. And whether they are able to implement it or not is a different ball game. I can let you know that with the experience that state government have encountered with the federal government that is threatening them that they may need to look elsewhere for revenue. Don't forget that the oil sector contributes over 80% of revenue to this continent. So if an entity is threatening that we are not going to be making contributions to the federal account, where will the money come from? We still have the Zanfara gold over there. Okay, don't also forget that recently the Petroleum Industry Act came to the front burner. And under the same act, we have 3% prescribed for host communities. While 30% is prescribed for frontier states. States that do not currently have oil, but we have to search for oil. So I think where we are right now is testing the provision of section 17 of the Nigerian position that talks about the social order of the country. And it says that freedom, equity, and justice shall be our platform of coexistence. And the big question now is that on the tax regime, this tax factor that we have, can we plan to have justice? Can we plan to have equity? So it's beyond just the figures right now. And I think that is where I agree with the city that we need to come to the table now and dialogue. And that again, is if dialogue has any relevance in this country. And don't forget that we are talking about the video value added tax now. What about the law, the other laws like the anti-open grazing laws that are coming up. And of course, these states have the power to make laws. For example, recently in the Northern part of the country, Canada specifically, we read about laws that forbid boutique owners to use money queen to display goods. So I think states are now trying to emphasize what's the value in their environment. So the federal government can now invite all the states. Beyond this value added tax, the 36 states of the federation, they have gone to court. They have sued the federal government on some duties. So the batches are on right now. And it is all about, can we have the common wealth of this station for the common good of the people? So logo, does this mean that, I mean, because many have also argued, I was listening to the radio today and someone actually said that this is more political than in the best interest of the states and local governments. But from the conversation that we're having tonight, it seems more like we're testing the waters for restructuring with testing the waters of viability of states. And just as Tunji said, if it comes down to it, will the states really be comfortable with it if we all decide that, you know, to your tent or Israel? You know, the wise plan said that necessity is a model of invention. There we have what we call cost and effect. Obviously now, except those who pretend that they are not monitoring the trend. The federal government has been making statements in the states to find their level in the area of security, even some governors are telling their citizens to find ways of protecting themselves. So, and these states do not want to go bankrupt. They do not want to fizzle into irrelevance. So they also begin to look at the laws and identify gas. Whether we like it or not, until the call of appeal for analysis otherwise, a gap has been discovered in the value added tax regime. And like Mr. Tunji said, you can come together, call all the states, have a dialogue, have a conversation and see how we can proceed. And the only way out is to bring justice and equity to the farm owner. You don't look at the interests of the nation, interests of the state. We are talking about tax now. What about managing insecurity? When the power to manage security, it's domiciled under in the exclusive legislative list. You need to wait for an instant area of police that is controlled by the federal government for you to effectively manage security in your state. When people have been clamoring for state policing. So these are the issues. So right now, whether you like it or not, whether you pay attention to it or not, I think Nigeria is right for restructuring. Talking about these laws that are coming or apply this value added tax, Gombe State is begging some of the states that are now going to call that it should be their bonus keepers. And the response from the courts is that if you want to, if the value you have to add to Nigeria is to be propagating banditry around the country, then maybe the Atongera, the federation should identify those who are who he claims they have identified as sponsors of Boku Haram. Get that money from them. So put into whatever they want to put. So we are talking about resources now and the engagement of resources. We have not even dealt in the region of how much Nigeria is going. As of today, the federation is going to be about $32.11 trillion Naira as against $10.12 trillion Naira in 2015. So economically, we are in shambles right now. And I believe that whether we are testing the waters or testing the mountains, some activities must begin to come on stage now to ensure that we secure the future of this country. And we get those to listen and engage, to listen and engage. And that is where someone like me we support what we are having right now in the country. And don't forget, we are going through the judicial processes and the legislative processes. Nobody's bringing out guns or arrows now to negotiate. And I think that should compel the federal government if they know that your gas can work against you and begin to do the needful. Okay. Come on, well, come on, go. Okay. Back to you, Tunji. This is a fling from what we're talking about, but let's just go there. Revenue sharing formula. If we're now talking about how to share VAT or asking that stamp duty monies be refunded to states, do you see anything happening in that area of our revenue sharing formula, especially for states that think that they're the ones who are responsible for the Commonwealth of the nation? Oh, definitely. There is going to be an issue there. I already see it. There is a lot of assumption. So it's state like Auguste, for instance. Auguste's house is a lot of industrial activity that happens within the region of Lagos, Ogu, or you and the rest. They house quite a large number of industries. But you see most of those industries are domiciled in Lagos. The question starts to come up for a lot of those states who has what VAT, what VAT is mine, what VAT belongs to the other state. And it starts to create a lot of confusion. If it is not very clear, if it is not very clear, because we need to also be able to identify what is economic activity within your domain. Because this is why the law is the law. What the law does is that it not only defines the issue, it also then interprets the issue to explain how the law should be implemented. So for instance, it would describe that on such items as ABC, you can collect VAT on this. Now on such items that are ABC, DCE, whether it is in your domain or not, it should go to the companies, whatever, whatever. So it takes a lot of explanation and interpretation. With those interpretations missing, what we are opening the door for is chaos. And we already see it happening. The people that will suffer the chaos are the businesses. And I feel sorry for every single business in river states right now, because you are scared of the FIRS. You know that if the law eventually gets to the side of the FIRS, you know that you're going to be in serious liability, you're going to pay a lot of fines. If for some reason, because the state is there and you don't pay those VAT charges to the state, the states will lock up your operational facilities and you can't work. So the businesses are the ones that will be in the middle of it right now. And I really feel sorry for them. As concerns sharing, we don't even know how we're going to share it. And I know that the state have not really thought about it through. It's a case of let's just go to court, let's have the conversations first and we'll decide all of that later. Because you can't just say every VAT that happens within my domain belongs to me. Because I mean, the domicile conversation might not even belong to you. So at this point, it's unclear, it's unclear. But I do know that if this goes through, the federal government will keep its import tax. Every single import tax that comes to the federal government. For instance, one of the things you said about the legal state talking about importation, the anything that is imported VAT on it, that will still keep at the hands of the federal government. I don't think they will let that go. That is probably one of the federal government's main sources of income. Why would they let it go to legal state? I mean, it doesn't make any sense for them. Legal state will have to fight. But it is somewhat of a right for legal state. So why wouldn't they want to let it go? Well, you can look at it that way. You can look at it that way. But the port was not built by legal state. Let's remember that. The port is a functioning federal government entity. It might have been situated in Lagos, but it's a functioning federal government entity. So in the longest, let me look at it this way. Imagine this being the fact that a big company is situated in legal state. It's operating out of legal state. But because its major factory is situated in Abel Kuta, then the state government there says all the VAT that happens in this company should go to that state, as against legal state where the headquarters is. It's not going to happen. Legal state is not going to allow it. So you see the confusion. It's already started. So it's a problem. But I don't think this is the reason why I keep saying, let's let this thing be fully interpreted before we start implementing it. Because if we don't, it only costs a lot of problems for businesses, and businesses will not want to be caught in the middle. So they'll just have to pay the fees that are due. Well, Jiddo Lagoon is a lawyer. And of course, Tunji Andrews is an economist. Thank you very much, gentlemen, for helping us to understand everything that's been said under this particular argument. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you very much for having me. All right. Nigeria. Well, we'll take a short break. And when we return, we'll be talking about what's happening in the South East and the Cititom Order, who's in charge here. Stay with us.


Hola Cancun, what an epic death con this was. Can we agree? Let's give it up for Ethereum Foundation and everyone making this happen! Yeah! Thank you! So let me play this. Okay, so before we begin I would like to ask how many of you have heard of Akasha before? Can we see a show of whoa? Okay that is impressive and I'm just curious how many of you have actually tried the alpha and wow okay so we have quite a few alpha veterans thank you for taking the time to play with the app. For those of you who haven't heard of Akasha before as a word it comes from Sanskrit and it means ether but it also stands as an acronym for advanced knowledge architecture for social human advocacy and what we are trying to build is a peer-to-peer alternative in a world where the social media networks are modeled after the Napster architecture where the user depends on a server or a server operator or an entity and we want to tackle this problem from a different perspective using different technologies so in a word we want to showcase the potential of Ethereum combined with IPFS to solve all problems using new technologies and the thing we want to achieve is a shared and persistent information commons that can help people put that can help people regain their collective memory and freedom of expression back from the clause of corporations that monetize each click and really everything it's really bad so to put it visually the Napster web apps are like web apps rely on the server admin or the server itself and if for some reason the user does not comply or respect whatever the server operator wants they lose access to the service in the alpha we took the hardest challenge we could find which was to build a fully decentralized desktop app meaning that each user when they downloaded and installed Akasha application they were actually installing bundled an Ethereum node and an IPFS node so in the beta thanks to hard work of the team we will also introduce a fully functional web version which will remove the need to sync with the chain and the users will then rely on MetaMask or any other web resource provider like status or missed and when we say that free speech is embedded in software what we mean is that whereas the user can be kicked for whatever reason from the Napster like web apps on Akasha the users are in full control over their identity and the content they are posting so our story began on May 6th, May 3rd 2016 on WordPress Freedom Day and this is when we basically announced that we've been working for quite some time on the Akasha alpha it was a total shot in the dark for us we weren't sure exactly what we expect so it was kind of a test to see how it will be received among ourselves before we release the website we talked and we say okay man what would we consider a success you know just to to have some some numbers and Marius here said like 30 people in the first 24 hours would be cool Roxana here more optimistic 50 people and I was secretly hoping at around 100 24 hours later we surpassed 200 signups which was like whoa and then in less than a month we surpassed 2000 people so it became clear that we weren't crazy or that we weren't the only ones so these these numbers might not seem much at first but it's worth mentioning that every single person that signed up for the alpha reached organically our website so we just published blog posts linked them on Reddit or tweeted them so what we wanted was to measure the real interest in the application and we felt that paid advertising would pay in those results we would end up measuring the efficiency of targeted ads rather than the real interest in in the application and idea so fast forwarding until early 2017 one year after Ethereum we launched the first public version of the alpha and it was called into the ether it was received very well by the community and I suppose you guys also tried it hope you had a pleasant experience when you when you tried it and basically in the alpha we tried to have a basic functionality you find in a social network which was to publish something to comment on something to read something to vote and to follow people combined also with things like since we are using Ethereum one of the side effects is that each identity is also a wallet so people can also send resources to each other and so forth and after the release one of this is actually a screen from the Akasha application a comment and on the first row you can see that someone was like excited that there's a doubt that normal people can use and for us it was like exactly what we were aiming for but I think the big point here was that with all these people you and the others that might be watching this this conference we proved that it is possible it is possible to have an application that does not rely on servers for people to communicate among themselves and thanks to your playfulness and your time put into testing the application we identified some bugs and we also identified what can be done better and Marius now is going to explain one of the lessons we learned in the alpha and that we applied in the beta Marius thank you yeah yeah so what is this yeah I think all all the alpha users got stuck at a given time in this loading loading screen this was happening because of the way we used to load the resources we were trying to get all of them at once so if at a given time one of the resources would be unavailable the all other resources would have to wait for that one to become online before fetching them to the user yeah so in the beta version this was one of the biggest challenge we we had to solve we've done this by loading every single resource individually as you can see in this demo yeah so it comes with a great improvement on the UX side so enough with this yeah so another highlight of the of the beta is the first token experiment in the alpha we had AETH which served as a placeholder token and I just want to to make something clear this is there is just one token which is this currently nicknamed AETH we are open to suggestions regarding the name we want to avoid confusion with other projects like Ethereum if anyone heard of it okay and this is just an experiment to get the ball running right so we fully assume that we are we don't have all the answers but we invite everyone to collaborate on finding them so to give you an overview of how this token works on the surface AETH is in an ERC-20 compatible token it works pretty much as you would expect from an ERC-20 token you can send and receive but there is a twist you can lock it for a predefined amount of time and this will give you some something we call MANA which acts like a a regenerable crypto field that can be burned inside the application Marius will cover this in more detail afterwards and essence is basically MANA that is burned and if the quality of the content is deemed as good the authors and the persons interacting can consume this essence to mint new tokens in existence and not lastly karma is our experiment on the proto reputation layer and Marius now we'll give you a presentation of the token flow of the states and how everything ties in together so so starting from the beta version every user will have to burn a small amount of MANA to interact with the application so how do we how do we get MANA yeah a user can get some MANA by locking his akasha tokens for a period of time during which he gets periodically the MANA replenished the MANA used for the MANA burned for doing actions in akasha can be collected afterwards into two specific resources called essence and karma karma will serve in akasha like some sort of proto reputation which will unlock specific features like creating communities and so on which will require to be above level of karma the other one the essence it's interesting because this is the first idea which came to us to incentivize the users to create content on akasha because it can be consumed to mint new year c20 akasha tokens and be spent afterwards also at any given time the user can unlock their modified tokens and afterwards it will go to the year c20 state by passing to a delay time which we call it a cycle yeah so let's see a new basic flow so we have the publisher which posts an entry on akasha the readers afterwards can express their general feeling about the quality of the content by voting after a voting period the entry will generate a small amount of essence which afterwards can be claimed by both publisher and the reader by specific use case you can look on the flyers yeah but like when we were starting to feel good about ourselves like yeah man i think we're on to something here uh vitalik did it again so then just a few days ago vitalik published this this entry so he basically pointed out that there are more than just uh so a good token economic system uh requires more than just a way to insert units of that particular currency into circulation and um you know uh this is uh quite interesting because uh following a couple of days the media started to digest this information and started calling the tokens invented until this point as tokens 1.0 and you know if you think about it it's pretty accurate since we are still barely scratching the surface of what can be done and we are still trying to understand the basic pieces of the puzzle that make a good token work and then things kept snowballing and by by the end of the day we had like this this sort of stuff and it's like everything you need to know about cryptocurrencies so um you know 90 percent of startups in general fall so maybe it would have been more accurate to say that with a poorly designed token 99 percent of the token startups will fall but to focus on the positive uh the question of how do we get to token 2.0 started to to take shape and uh since vitalik thanks started this uh i figured that it's best to just show a short video of a short segment of a recent video done by uh vitalik so without further ado the nice thing about cryptocurrency i think is that it just makes it so bloody easy to create one of these economic mechanisms you just write it up in code that it just makes it real easy to sort of serve as an economic experimentation ground for doing these kinds of things and so you know the sort of the whole point of economic experimentation is sort of coming up with these sort of clever clever little tricks to sort of combine together incentives and sort of put you know put things together in this nice way that gives people the the incentive to do the right thing and you know just yeah there's probably quite a lot to be done it's just uh you're thinking we're barely getting started we are barely getting started i like to focus on that right it's still just year two after ethereum and um our approach to this thing to to uh maybe answering this question is that uh just as ethereum had during its frontier uh the ethereum uh olympics uh where i were developers from around the world were invited to identify bugs attack vectors and basically if you can break it go ahead and we'll learn from it from it will become stronger uh we invite everyone uh here and uh that's watching the presentation to join us in uh breaking and reinventing and re-breaking the token proposal and basically with the aeth proposal and what we uh showcase today we want to just get the prototype in the world and then uh in the sort of cypher punk inception like uh fashion twitterate co-creating the open on akasha itself so uh we will use tags to coordinate and later on if we still have time we will show you an actual demo of how this uh this will work but basically what we want or hope is that uh if we approach things from this perspective maybe people and and startups can think of of tokens as these dynamic adaptive systems which involve multiple pieces that you have to carefully uh put together uh rather than a graph going from zero to the moon right so um i think together if we will tackle this uh this question um we might uh reach some emergent shared understanding because uh no one has like the full idea of what is token 2.0 but a thousand little half-baked ideas can come together in something completely new and the cool thing about this is that this is a code i really like is that the mind once stretched by a new idea never returned to its original dimensions and if you want uh an example just remember that in uh 2014 ethereum had the ether presale which led to around 18.5 million dollars being raised to fund the development of the platform and it was number one as in the most successful crowdfunding campaign in the history of the internet and now a couple of years later over three billion dollars have been raised by companies using icos as a form of raising funds for their projects so just one idea huge impact so now the big picture of what we are trying to accomplish is like we're not trying to compete with the big boys i mean they have billions of users would be nice but let's get real uh we want to have a real alternative in in place to keep them in check and uh this is not like a paper or plastic back choice we want to offer people a fundamentally different choice when it comes to each person's digital sovereignty as human netizens and uh i think we can all agree after this beautiful death con that watching history in the making is cool but we think that writing the future ourselves is even cooler so on this note we invite everyone to be to to join us in building together in this decade a better knowledge uh architecture for the next century and uh we actually have all the tools uh and we have like a pretty good idea of where things can go and uh the future is not the place we get to visit the future is a place we get to create and i would like to announce that the beta signups are open for everyone that wants to participate and subscribe just go to akasha.world insert your email in and in a matter of weeks we will send you the invites and we will start release the beta and since i see we still have two minutes i will now show you a demo of what the beta looks like and this is basically the dashboard view in which we have like different streams and different columns which can be customized by the users and here we add a column which is a tag and in this case it's crypto olympic so people can coordinate on the ideas brainstorm these are proposals they can use the entries and the comment section as counterproposals or to discuss various uh uh ideas and this is like an example in which is hola kankun hola defcon how how it works to publish a comment as you can see the ui has changed quite a bit also in the back end we uh basically are now looking at the completely rewritten decentralized application from dap so it would be more correct to call it like version two but since we started with the alpha we we will name it beta and here on the left side these are what we call boards for now and basically offers like different windows into specific topics so if we take the example of defcon one of the of the boards could have been like events presentations workshops and people could have coordinated better rather than checking on reddit 10 discord rooms one slack you get idea two geeters and and so on so i would like to thank you all for your attention and uh it's a great being here hope to see you on akasha soon


Okay, everyone. Welcome to what the app is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, Coating's weekly YouTube program of hot news out of the region. In partnership with Common Frontiers, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Friends of Latin America, Massachusetts Peace Action and Task Force on the Americas, we broadcast weekly at 4.30 p.m. Pacific, 7.30 p.m. Eastern on Coating's YouTube channel. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Telegram, and now on RadIndyMedia.com. Today's episode deconstructing the September 4th Levisite in Chile. I want to introduce all of you to our two guests and then give you a brief background before we get into our analysis of what happened in Chile on Sunday the 4th. So first, I'd like all of you to meet Patricio Zamorano. He is the co-director of the Council on Hemispheric Affairs. The Council on Hemispheric Affairs, also known as COHA, COHA, is a broadcast partner of this program. So we're really happy to have Patricio join us as a guest, Chilean-born guest who lives in Washington, DC, but also as co-director of one of our broadcast partners. Patricio did vote at the Chilean Embassy on Wednesday on Sunday, and he was also an election observer Sunday before. And then joining us live from Chile this evening is Javier Amanzi, and she is an activist with Co-Ordinadora Feminista Ocho Eme, an English coordinator, Feminismau, 8am. So welcome both of you. What an honor to have you both joining us in conversation today. I'm really excited about what we're going to kind of deconstruct for our audience. Let me give the audience a brief background. On Sunday, September 4, Chileans overwhelmingly voted against a proposed new constitution, rejecting what would have been one of the world's most progressive charters. While nearly 80 percent of Chileans voted to draft a new constitution in 2020, nearly 62 percent of voters rejected the new text, with 99.7 percent of the ballot boxes counted and think that was as of yesterday. President Gabriel Boric, whose government is largely tied to the new text, said cabinet changes were coming and the government would work to draft another constitution. The proposed text that voters rejected was a response to widespread violent protests that gripped the nation in late 2019. And some of you may remember Patricia joined us in 2019 to talk about what was happening on the ground in Chile, what those national protests were about. And I will share with all of you the link just as so you can take a look at that as a reminder. Gives you some good background as to what we're going to talk about today. So those were the late 2019, excuse me, which focused on social rights, the environment, gender parity and indigenous rights, a sharp shift from what, from the prior constitution's market friendly context that was drafted during the Pinochet dictatorship. So Javier and Patricio, let's talk about what happened on Sunday and what was in the constitution that people rejected, why they rejected it and also what was the environment. I guess maybe that's even the bigger comment we should open with the media environment and the political and social environment that created the failure of this new constitution to pass. Who wants to jump in? I think Javier should be the first one because she was there in Chile.  Yes, good afternoon everyone. It is, I must say, very difficult to talk on Chile these days. Being part of a cycle of social mobilizations that, of course, has inspired the world and most progressive grassroots and the left, I guess, from other places. So, of course, it's our responsibility to think, to really think what just happened in Chile. Because, of course, this was not, we didn't expect this result, not only because we lost in terms of that, between the rejection and the approval, but mainly because of the extent of these results. In the first place, I would like to say that, whereas it's very important to create a question now. What happened? Okay, the rejection won in all the regions of our country. In the vast majority of them, by more than 60%, the approval won only in eight districts in the regions of Valparaiso and Santiago. So we must ask now, what did the people actually reject in this election? What did the people reject when they voted rejection? What was this election about? What was at stake? And the answer is not big. It will require taking a lot of and capturing the sensibility of sectors that have never expressed themselves in the vote. Since 2012, in Chile, we have voluntary vote. This is the first time since then that we had a mandatory vote. We changed, we changed, of course, everything and how the behavior, the electoral behavior of our society. We were part of the command of the team of social movements for the campaign of the approval. And the very same day, the night of the first of this, of September, we made our first declaration where we said that this was an electoral defeat, but not the defeat of a project. Not the defeat of what was at stake in this very moment, which is, of course, the destiny of a cycle of mobilizations that started in October of 2019 and that today we had, as a result, this constituent process. For us, it's very important to understand this because, of course, the right, the far right that is now being very, that tries to interpret this result as the idea that Chile is a conservative country or as the idea that this is the defeat of a project, that the people knew the content of this draft of a new constitution. That's not real. So it's very important to say in the first place that what is at stake in this election is a new form that was first an election that had new rules because for the first time, more than 10 years, people went to vote because it was a mandatory vote. The second place, it's important to say that because of that, 85% of the Chilean people who could vote voted, which is the election with the most popular participation in the history of Chile. This is very important, of course. In the third place, it is important to say, too, that people did not know the content of this new constitution. People did not vote with information. This was not an election that people could vote with all the information needed. And in the first place, we must talk about the absolute inequality of the four of these elections, of how we did the campaign in this election, and the important role of social media and social networks in this process. Of course, in the States, you know a lot about this and we have to talk about this because it's important to understand contemporary democracies and what happened in Chile has a lot to do with the absolute control in Chile of the social media and social networks. Wow, I find this is fascinating to me. And maybe I guess the thing that jumps out the most is, well, you mentioned new rules, 85% voted, it was mandatory voting. How do we explain voting without full information? Was that tied with the social media dissemination or how did that happen? I can start answering that, maybe Patricia also has something from his experience, but in a very, I must say first, that this is a process that took a very little time to write a new constitution. Actually, it's one of the most, one of the shortest process in the history of constituent processes in the world because we had just one year. And in the second place, in a country that doesn't have a lot of civic or political education, actually, that's one of the cause of the heritage of the dictatorship in Chile. And so that's very important as well. But I would say that the role of fake news and we've been and that's a lot of something that has been during these days being put to the front in the analysis. And this idea that the people voted thinking that they were voting for something thinking that they were voting against the idea that their houses would be that they would lose their houses. That was a very widespread idea in the population. The idea that there was going to be different forms of justice that indigenous people would have privileges. The idea that there was that people would could abort with nine months. The idea that they will lose the national symbols were going to be changed, that the flag was going to change, etc., etc. Those are some of the main issues. Just like that. Some of the main reasons why people voted rejection. None of them were part of the content of the new constitution. And they were highly widespread throughout social media and throughout social networks, throughout WhatsApp, throughout Facebook, throughout Instagram, throughout TikTok, through YouTube. So we must talk about this because it's very similar to what happened in the referendum in Colombia, to what happened possibly in the Brexit, to what has happened in Brazil with the first election for Sonata. And of course with Trump. So this is just another example of the extent of the intervention of this in democracies. Patricia, what was your sense being in Washington DC on Sunday the 4th? Sure, sure. Thank you so much, Terry, for the opportunity always. Sure, I mean, I have a view that is inspired by studying the historic process of Chile for a long time from a political science point of view and also my experience here in Washington DC and everything that transpired there in Chile for the last three or four years. Of course, I haven't been there personally, but I have been in the country several times, but not leaving there day by day, which is a different approach for sure. What I can tell you though, yes, in fact, the media concentration is in Chile is critical. We have a few owners of most of the media and they tend to be conservative. There's no doubt that because they were imperfections. We have imperfections in the way that the Constitutional Assembly work is true. As Javier is saying that it's really it was very aggressive to write a complex text in less than a year. That that was challenging. That was a mistake. We know that for sure. The at the end of the process, the text was delivered in a rush. We have a huge text, 388 articles, 50,000 words. Very difficult to defend as an entire body of knowledge, right? 50,000 words. How do you defend that? Every single aspect. The National Assembly, the Constitutional Assembly tried to do a lot. Tried to put everything on that plate. The contradictions inside the National Assembly, the Constitutional Assembly were exploited. Exploited heavily by the right media conglomerates. There's no doubt about that. There were contradictions. There were discussions.  We have to admit that that the unfortunately we have certain characters within the Constitutional Assembly that were just just silly, funny anecdotes of people voting from a shower. Things that it doesn't matter.  So if you see the polls and the polls are in this time, I think they were very close to the final to the final results. If you analyze the polls and surveys before the referendum, you will notice that people were in opposition of the work of the Constitutional Assembly without knowing the actual text. They didn't know the actual product of a year of work, and they were opposed 60% to 30%. Basically, 60% approving the work, disapproving the work, and only 30% approving it. The other thing also is the fact that we don't have to get confused. This is resolved against a whole body of text, but it's not against most of the content because eight out of 10 people in Chile want a new Constitution. They don't like the dictatorship of the Constitution. They want a new Constitution. So unfortunately, this isolated factor creating this sense of failure. And I have to say sadly, I have to be very honest in the analysis because it is there is some conservative vibe in Chile in the fact that one of the major oppositions measured by the polls and confirmed by the election is that people got very, very afraid of the indigenous autonomy. They didn't like the concept of of a plural national identity. They didn't like it. Chileans didn't like it. Even though those rights don't affect them. I mean, when you have rights for communities, when you have human rights, civil rights that are going to help our fellow community, we progressive people believe on those rights, right? If those rights are going to help the, especially a minority, we celebrate that. If gay people want to get married, we celebrate that right. Conservative people don't celebrate that right. They don't believe that is correct, even though gay marriage or same sex marriage doesn't affect them. The same thing with indigenous population in our countries that have been affected strongly by the state with violence from the state, with legal tools, a lot of issues. And then the Chilean society, 60%, didn't agree with that. They didn't want the indigenous people to have such autonomy because in fact, a new justice system was going to be created just for them, which was awesome because they need that. But then for the new constitution, I'm sure that that's going to be one of the factors that the new writers of the new constitution are going to consider, unfortunately. And the Cabrera story right, in opposing certain specific little things, we are affecting so many strong rights for women, for so many things. So hopefully we will learn from this process. So this kind of, you know, your comment about basically negating a plurie national country is, Javier, you mentioned that as well. And I mean, I guess what we could say it's racism. In a sense, fear, race, a fear based out of race. So how much does some of the population vote? Javier, you mentioned the social media and clearly the no vote was controlling the narrative through social media. And there is something for all of us on the left of center to learn about that. And in all organizations that we work with and how to up that game, the narration that we project. But how much, when I guess this is a question really for both of you, how much of the rejection was based on domestic narrative and or fear of what is happening in some of the neighboring countries, perceived fear. I mean, you say plurie national, clearly I'm thinking Bolivia. And then Columbia also was also interesting how, you know, their peace referendum went. How much of this is really, it's almost like the Constitution maybe is ahead of where the country is culturally. People want certain things, but not it's going to take like an evolution to get there. And I'm reading in the media that the president's going to try again with when the complexion of Congress changes and how realistic is that? Yes, I would like to say some, a lot of things first. It's a lot more complex, in my opinion, just to talk about an idea of how conservative the society in Chile is and how racist it is. But of course, these are two major concerns. You must understand that Chile, the idea of an neoliberal subjectivity is a very wide, it's absolutely a demonic in Chile. And that of course has a lot to do with the heritage of the dictatorship and how that has been deepened throughout these more than 30 years of transition. But also it's important because for instance, in some of the districts with a major population of indigenous people, of Mapuche people, they voted rejection. Like in most, actually, the some of the regions of the country with the most percentage of rejection was actually where there is a major population of indigenous people. So what one would say, what happened here? Yes, and it's more complex than just talking about internalized racism. But of course, also part of that. That's not only that. This election, we must say to that this idea, it's very difficult to analyze this election, trying to compare it with the elections before. Why? Because to be honest, this is one of a very important facts. The approval didn't change a lot. Okay. From the total amount of people that voted approval in the first referendum to start the constituent process, this 80 percent of people didn't change as much towards the total amount of people in this last election. It changed. It changed one million people. This is one million people less in the approval of the first referendum than the approval of this late referendum. But the rejection, instead, they grew six million people, six. And this is mainly people that had not voted before. Okay. And this is mainly people of the poorest sectors of our country. See? So then these people were the ones that had only access to the process throughout mainly social media and mainly social networks. And this is people that had not voted since 2012, probably. This is people for whom this idea of a mandatory vote, of course, had an impact in their electoral behavior. And of course, they reacted to this vote in different motifs, you see? So we have to understand what was there. Was it actually against plurinationality? Definitely, there's a part of that. See? But was it all because of that? There's also people who voted against the government, because they thought that constituent process and government were the same. So they were voting against the government. There are also others who voted against the system. So then rejection was just a vote against politics, against this idea of democracy. There was also a vote, a very conservative vote, of course, that's actually the same that voted for cast in the last election. But that's just part of it. So it's a very diverse and heterogeneous sector of people, the one who voted rejection. So it's very important to understand. And yes, I must say that there's a part of it. There is a very, I would say, consolidated conservative vote, definitely. And this is just part of it. There's also a very, part of it was people who voted with not enough information and just reacting to what was in the media, which is actually a very racist approach to the content of the constitution, where this idea of internationality was presented as this idea of the division of the country, which was never it. And there's also a part of these voters who were probably enthusiastic about the idea of a new constitution, but they were not enthusiastic about the content of this case. I would say that's actually, to be honest, a very the smallest margin of voters. This idea of the census. So then I'm just saying it's a very interesting and very complex idea of how to understand this, but it's important to say that the 38% of people who voted approval this time is actually very similar to the ones who voted for voting and the ones who voted for the approval in the sector. That has not changed as much as it seems just by seeing the percentages. Wow. I mean, this is really fascinating. I guess, can we conclude that the Chilean population still wants a new constitution? That is true, yes. People still want a new constitution. And I will say on a very personal level, when I heard the 388 sections, chapters, and 50,000 words, this is a huge constitution. And I think here in the United States of my own country, a lot of people, regardless of their political philosophy, would say, wow, that's a huge document that's going to control every aspect of my life. Just the size of it, that it's almost too much. Too much in it? Is that a fair thing to say that people may have rejected that, that it was maybe tried to maybe go too far? I don't want to say too far, because that would infer something different. But to cover too much, yes. Yeah, all at once. Yes. Because we have to remember also, I think, there in the analysis, we had a huge need in Chile. A huge need, a historic need for restoration of humanity. The life in Chile is hard. It's for 20 years more, 20 years after the dictatorship. But during the dictatorship, we had that almost 30 to 40 years of neoliberal policies that were hard on people. A lot of poverty in Chile is stopped in the world in terms of inequality. Rich people in Chile are very rich, poor people are very poor, we have extremes. The lack of security for work, the lack of security for health, because the health system was privatized by the dictatorship, the educational system was privatized by the dictatorship, the pension system was privatized by the dictatorship. So there's so many things that make life in Chile so hard. So you can understand then the deputies who were in charge of writing this constitution in a desperate effort to include everything to solve the Chilean issue. And the Chilean issue is complex. Deep is the interest of the big financial actors is incredible. They have so much money and the media control. So yeah, we had all that. All that Javier was actually explaining on top of the difficulty of trying to transfer the message, especially to, it was very interesting what Javier just said that based on the data, these six million new votes. Yes, I mean mathematically a big percentage of those were working families, working workers, low-income workers that actually were going to be very benefited by this constitution because this constitution returns the obligation of the state to be in charge of health, to provide education for everyone, et cetera, et cetera. So rights for women, rights for so many sectors of the country that don't have a voice. So it is a good content. It is good content. But in fact, there was a failure in transferring that message in a very successful and positive way. It was very negative. It was always negative for six months. It was always negative, unfortunately, and the positive aspect of everything that the new constitution entitles was really destroyed like a six months ago. There's no doubt about that. Well, it's disappointing. I mean, it's disappointing to a lot of us in the atmosphere. We're so hopeful to see that penerche, that neoliberal constitution just completely go away. And it's got to be even more disappointing for those of you who are citizens of Chile. What's next? What's the next step that president's going to have a new Congress or not a fully new, but the complexion of Congress is getting ready to change, presumably with with more members that are supportive of him and the constitution. Does the count does a this goes into a redraft now, correct? It doesn't go away. It's not like over and done with, which I think some people believe outside of Chile. It goes and it gets rewritten. Is that correct, Javier? And we and you try again. Well, it's a very open scenario in this precise moment. I would like to say about what you asked before that it's a very interesting idea, this of the length or what of the content, what it should talk about constitution. There are these like, mainly these two this idea that a constitution should be minimum. Yes, this is a very liberal idea of a constitution. And there were others among them ourselves that thought that this constitution, of course, had to answer and to be a response to not only to social demands, but to the transformation of institutional of this institutionality in Chile, precisely to open a possible change of the structures of neoliberal of neoliberalism. And because as you must know, the constitution of 1980 is precisely written to respond to the need of the neoliberal choc, the Chicago boys instruction in Chile. So I would I must say and I will affirm what I say, Patricia, that this was a content. And of course, it's been known as a very progressive craft. And of course, it was. And it talked about a lot of things. And it had mainly three main concerns was to deepen democracy to build new tools for a more open democracy. It also in terms of social rights. It had talked about a lot of what today it's been our experience is of the absolute privatization of social rights. And it also had a major breakthrough in terms of the feminist environmental and indigenous agenda of change. So for us as feminists, we recognize in this content are in a way a program for us for the future. And we will fight precisely because we know that this content is has been a lot has at least this the middle of people who voted for it. But not only that, it was a very important process of social and political articulation of a possible alternative that we constructed for this year. So that's very important in terms of what we're going to push in the future in this and actually in this possible future constituent process. In this very moment, they must say that the right made a campaign where they actually told people to all the population of Chile that they were going to push another constituent process. That was what they said in their campaign. They said let's do another one, a better one, one that actually responds to your needs. And they talked like that because they knew that there was this main, this widespread idea, this common sense idea today that we need a new constitution. So instead of saying we don't need one, they said we need another one, not this one. But today, we've seen how the right party, the right wing parties have hesitate on this idea. And they're now saying that they won't necessarily be part of this process. So then we are seeing like in a very fast and accelerated moment of decisions, the negotiations between these different parties and there's no actual, there's no definite response, no definite answer to this question. We hope, of course we hope that we're going to have another constituent process. But to be honest, it's very difficult. It's very difficult that this is going to be real. Because today we're seeing not only the right, the far right that has today a very, they're trying to use this moment as their moment. And they're saying that they're not going to join any process, but also the right, the most centrist right that it has their own doubts about it. So it's very uncertain if we are actually going to have, and there's even though the government and the president said that we should, and of course the left and centrist parties are saying that we should, we don't necessarily have the amount of votes in the Congress to actually put that into action. Yes, it's just to compliment that what Javier said, none of the right and the center left, none of those sectors having no votes to impose anything. So, and I think the society right now in Chile is a little exhausted on the process. Remember, we have entry referendum first. Do you want a new constitution that was won 80% or 79% approval for a new constitution? Then we had to elect the constitutional assembly. That was a whole process, very complex to elect those 154 deputies that took a lot of energy, a lot of political capital from a lot of people and sectors and and political parties, a lot of synergy was lost there. And now we have a situation and then we have a new referendum again. The situation in the country, we have to get to contextualize it. Boris is not in the best shape possible. We have a huge inflation exactly like here, although in the US is improving, but Chile is still under the influence of COVID and all those issues. We have a security issue in Chile as well, unfortunately. That's another factor that could explain some of the votes Javier out of the 6 million working families suffering the criminality, although in Chile it's always about perception because the actual numbers are not that bad. You compare Chile with Colombia or Brazil, but still the perception of Chile in terms of insecurity is overstated all the time. It's not underestimated, it's the opposite. People believe that the situation is horrible. And the constitution had some new roles for security forces, eliminated certain rights of the state to exercise aggressive measurements against the population in cases of emergency. Some of those previous rights of the states were diminished. So I can imagine part of the population say, this new constitution is going to make Chile unsafe. I can totally understand that and the right exploded that big time. So the situation as Javier is describing it is very close. We have no idea. Boris is trying to negotiate right now immediately. They are saying that by this week they were saying, by September 11 maybe we're going to come out with a solution. It's a scenario that maybe again a group of experts will write the new constitution. That's another possibility. Another possibility is Congress can try to write the constitution. The problem with the temporary law that authorized this whole thing, nobody really thought that the new constitution was going to be rejected. So we don't have a plan B in terms of the institutional framework of the country. And that's bad. Nobody expected this like this. Because of course you have eight out of nine Chileans want any constitution. And a lot of people like me thought, well, it's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. And nobody wants the dictatorship constitution to prevail. Well, we were wrong. We were wrong. Simple as that. And so this is the flavor of democracy as well. Unfortunately, right? It hurts. It hurts for humanity, for humanism, for human rights. It hurts. But remember that the peace accord was rejected in Colombia the first time as well. And that was horrible. But then the country was capable of rebuilding the energy and relaunch a process that was at the end not perfect, but better. So in this case, we need to hear these results carefully. And the new people, whoever it is who is going to write this new constitution, of course, it's going to be a different one. Hopefully, because the values are there, people want a better environment, people want more rights, people want a state-sponsored health system, people want a state-sponsored education, people are tired of the pension of the pension structure. So I cannot imagine a new constitution without doing that because even the right winners, they know that if they don't do this, they don't fix this, the streets are going to be violent again, and business will be affected. And they don't want their packets to be affected. So they don't want more violence in the streets. So that's the hope that at the end of the day, we need a new constitution. Well, the majority of the population initially did want a new constitution. You know, I think for me personally listening to both of you in this conversation, my biggest takeaway, and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think Javier and you were maybe a little more overt about it, but both of you implied it, this is really a learning process. I mean, a real, real, and I think this is important for all of us who are activists and work in politics and social movements, etc.  You know, there was such high hopes that the outcome was going to be completely different than what it was on Sunday. And yet it is really an opportunity to look at, and Javier, you are great at the four points you mentioned opening the program. The real, you know, what do we do wrong? What do we need to do better? But also looking, you know, at the people. What are the people really want? And how do you articulate that to make sure their success next time around? I mean, it's a real learning process. And I mean, it's disappointing, but it's also okay. It's also okay to learn what needs about, I guess in general, I would say about ourselves in any of the work that we do. But for Chile, there's a lot that maybe some hopes had already, the country had already evolved, maybe quite hasn't met. And the narratives, the narratives, the educational process and the media narrative, particularly the social media, this huge, this huge everywhere, everywhere across the planet right now. And my biggest comment would be looking at the United States and what's happening, you know, in Europe right now, between Russia and Ukraine, it's such a one narrative only, and the impact that that has on an ancient people. So how should we close? Let's close on a hopeful note, please. What's next? What can we do as activists supporting the Chilean people and promoting a non neoliberal model or at least a softer form of capitalism as we evolve to something more progressive? What can we do as activists? What would you like to see us do, Javier? Yes, I'd say that this is of course a moment where we must have an accurate analysis of what has just happened. It's important because if not, we're going to do fast answers to something that is actually just as Patricia said, we didn't expect. So it's hard because it's difficult to see the results. It's very hard to see and to recognize that most of the people that voted rejection are actually the people with the less incomes in our country are working class people who were never in courage to vote throughout the last elections. And then when they decided to, they didn't decide to go, they were forced to go. And when they do, this is how they respond to it. So for us, if we are from a social movement as a feminist, as a leftist activist, of course, it's a very important thing to question ourselves. What is our capacity to construct majorities, social majorities, and that our alternatives, our projects respond to the need and make sense to the working class. And that's, I guess, the main question we have to do to ourselves. But at the same time, I must say, we cannot be naive or ingenious about, we cannot try to, only this, this is a very critical idea of our, of the extent of our politics and the extent of how we are actually making an impact. But at the same time, we must see the effect. And this is important, I guess, for all the, for all the democracies and the next elections throughout the world. I'm thinking, of course, of Brazil, how we understand the impact of the control of social media and how we the impact of the narratives of these hegemonic narratives and how we understand the impact social networks in our daily basis and debates and how the communication of everything that we're what we're trying to transform and has to have a very massive communication, communication, and politics, how we understand that. Because if not, we're going to make very progressive and transformative projects that have no capacity to make a mass transformation or make actually the majorities we need to make them happen. So I'm thinking that it's a very important thing to understand, I guess, for the contemporary democracies throughout the world. And at the same time, it's a very difficult and critical moment to do so because we are, of course, living in a global crisis and the recession after the pandemic. And in a moment, then that, of course, the far right and fascist movement to be very accurate.  They're doing and they're actually getting bigger and bigger throughout these same places. So then I would just say we must all analyze and try to understand and try to come to make new tools and make and have a communicative communicational politics. If we want to win the next time. Tricia, do you have any closing comments? Sure. Yes, I think what we can do, everybody, everybody that is outside of Chile and also inside Chile, is just to understand these results as a very particular specific partial result about a moment on this giant photography that is a new constitution. This was not unfortunately a referendum by chapters. It could have been maybe better to divide these 388 articles, I don't know, in 10 critical and fundamental chapters of this new institutional framework and maybe and separate every single one. And maybe these situations would have been different, right? We would have that capacity of reading the will of the people in a better way. Maybe seven out of 10 articles, major chapters were going to be accepted, right? And only three of them rejected. And then the situation would have been better. We also understand the situation of making the boat mandatory. It had to be done because it's the constitution. It is the constitution. And even though we added new boats, new people that maybe never voted, that was exactly the intention. So nobody can complain that they didn't participate in such a fundamental thing. And that's because it's a bad cost. But we had to do it. So I think it's good. At the end of the day, it's good that these six million people that never mobilized or didn't care about anything, they cared. I agree, though, the analysis is very clear. They voted against something that was very good for them. No doubt about that. So you have a disconnection. We have a disconnection of message that is serious. How is that possible? Because of the media owned by the right, because of the social media, because of the dirty campaigns, we are very familiar with all that. So we just need to make sure that people understand that people still want a new constitution. People still reject the Pinochet constitution. Majority of the country. That 80% still stands. So that's the positive note. We have the need. We have strong needs that needs to be covered. So we believe that the mobilization is going to start again. It's going to take time. And yeah, we have the hope that the needs are bigger than this outcome. And those needs are going to push for change. I believe in social, historic movements. We have seen it so many times. The same election of Boris was impressive. I mean, he created a new party in 2018. Very tiny. And three, four years later, he's the president of Chile, one of the youngest one. That was a surprise as well. Agenda came to power against a huge, a huge group of interests against any social movements. For 70 years, no lefty president was even close to be in power. Agenda did it. And of course, that's why he was destroyed. It was just too much, maybe for that time. He was so advanced to his time. Chavez was in jail. And five years later, he was the president of a huge movement that still is influencing so many countries. Fidel was in those mountains with he, only 12 or 13 people survived a first attempt to make Cuba independent. And three years later, the revolution had a huge victory. And still, there, 50, 60 years later. So this, when the social movement is strong enough, nothing can stop it. So in this case, I think this is just a pause in a long process because Chile, Chile needs answers. And those answers are coming sooner or later. Well, let's leave it at that hopeful note. And again, this comes up every episode we touch on social movements and the power lap at me because I'm a child of the 60s here in San Francisco, power of the people. But those social movements are so critical to change the power of that. And so I want to thank both of you for joining us for this episode. Patricio Zamorano from Washington, D.C., with the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, Javier Amanzi, joining us live from Chile today. I'm so thankful for your time and your brilliant analysis of Sunday the Fourth and very educational conversation for myself and for our audience. So I hope that you can both join us again as we watch the evolution, what comes next. It's going to be really important for all of us to stay in solidarity with Chile and people like you, Javier, are on the ground in the feminist movement and many others. And we'll watch what comes next. Again, I'm so thankful for your time. And I just want to remind our audience that you've been listening to what the F is going on in Latin America and the Caribbean, Code Pink's weekly YouTube program, hot news out of the region. We broadcast every week, 4.30 p.m. Pacific, 7.30 p.m. Eastern. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And be sure to catch Code Pink Radio every Thursday morning, excuse me, Thursday morning, 11 a.m. Eastern broadcasting on WPFW out of Washington, D.C., and WBAI out of New York City. And Code Pink Radio can also be found on Apple Podcasts. So everyone, we'll see you next week. Thank you for joining us. And thank you again, Patricia and Javier, a wonderful conversation. Really appreciate your analysis. Bye. Have a good night. Bye-bye. Good night.


Growing your own vegetables, even in the most forgiving of climates, is a challenge that many of us are all too familiar with. But for Svalbard's residents, polar sun cycles that seed months of total darkness in winter and midnight sun in summer make conventional farming here near impossible. What's happening now, we're all kind of disconnected and that's what I've been trying to do is reconnect everybody back to to where the food comes from because we all take it for granted, you know? Good morning! Have some greens for you. Some radish for you. And some clover. We started to plant your other ones, so once it's ready then we will start to follow that, but for now we have this, so yeah. And the other ones are there, I can take the waste. Thank you. Long travel distances for food or for waste disposal of almost 1,000 kilometers between the Svalbard city of Long Yibyan and the Norwegian mainland mean that residents here are some of the world's highest energy consumers. Recognizing a lack of available fresh local food, international chef termed Long Yibyan local, Benjamin Vidmar saw an opportunity to change the way that food was viewed. So we started this in 2016. And we ordered it from Alaska, this dome, and then we put it back together and we had to put a lot of concrete around the perimeter so it's secured to concrete. Here we focus more to the leafy greens, herbs, we do some microgreens. Now we have some beets there. There's kale, radish, daikon radish, so yeah, we've just been growing. But we can grow and these kind of like the cold weather, so we don't have to warm it too much. We don't use any heat inside of here, it's only from the sun. So it can get up to 30 degrees when the sun is out and it can go down to 5-10 degrees when the sun's not out. Now it's about 8 degrees in here. And this dome is only used in the in the summertime? Yeah, only when we have light. So from end of May to about end of September, we can grow out here. And then the rest of the time we grow indoors. Fantastic. And leafy greens you've found to be the most kind of, I suppose for your system, the most kind of economically viable to keep this operation running? Yeah, well the thing is it would be so nice to grow tomatoes and cucumbers and potatoes, but we wouldn't make much money from that. So and all of this stuff comes by flight, so it's very expensive to buy and it doesn't transport very well. So so that's why we've been kind of focused on that. Using two main facilities, Benjamin and his team are able to grow in both the summer and darker winter months. By working around seasonality, Benjamin uses both indoor and outdoor facilities in order to maximize his productivity while minimizing any waste and energy consumption. So I normally just go through and open everything up. This is radish, the daikon radish. This is also more radish. And a mirror, because the mirror, yeah mirrors, he's the, he's the, we're the main two behind it. I just need to water these. But I, we're the main ones behind it. So like I kind of take over the greens and you know, keep them growing. And he does the delivery and he also takes care of the basil. And things like, things like composting. You mentioned that you're using compost from yours and other businesses. Have you seen it kind of rise at all in that since you've been actually don't want it to rise so much. No, because we don't have the space or the facilities to deal with it. So now we only compost what we deliver. Yeah, yeah, sure. So when this goes out, we take it back. But if you were upscaling that? Then we would take more. Yeah, for sure. We would take more because we would need to, but for now it's very small scale. But the thing is we make the possibility for our guests to compost. Who else is doing that in town? Everybody else throws it down the drain or they throw it in a garbage. So it's nobody else doing that. So tomorrow I will take this one, maybe this one, this one and this one. And I will put under the light and then it takes about another three days. And then we can deliver it. OK, what is the light to? It's going to turn green because now you see they're a bit yellow. OK. Longyearbyen's busy restaurant industry has absolutely welcomed a new option in Ben's locally produced grains. High-end restaurants like Funken Lodge now use Ben's homegrown ingredients to give their dishes a unique arctic edge. My name is Jelena. I've been working in Svalbard at Funken Lodge for six months now. Oh, it's... What do you get from the chips? I mean, this is amazing. Yeah. Especially, I mean, we are almost at the North Pole. Yeah. So this is exclusive, I would say, for Svalbard. And also it's sustainable and it's really cool. I mean, you don't even have this like in Gothenburg where I'm from. Yeah. I mean, if you don't have fresh things, you can never make good food. According to me, it tastes better. And of course, I mean, we grow it here. So it's always fresh. If we order from the mainland and it goes by plane, it's also bad for the environment. And also it usually just dies on the way here. So it's just bad and we need to throw it away. Anyways, so it would be best for everyone and for Svalbard's restaurant in general, if we could grow as much as possible here. So hopefully we'll get there. So, I mean, we're on a good way. Outside of growing vegetables, Ben also operates tours of the local area in his custom-built restaurant on Wheels. It gives Guess a unique insight into his operation, as well as a chance to experience local foods like Arctic reindeer, paired with his very own grains. Yeah, so it's a restaurant bus. We do tours, do the Arctic Toppa tour, we do Northern Lights tour. So you sit in there, you can drink wine, we serve some snacks, and then the kitchen is on the side of it. So the kitchen is like a food truck. And then the bus is like the restaurant. And you serve your produce and stuff. Yeah, that's the plan. Now we want to make like a set up where we grow our food, we serve it with our tours. And yeah, I can show you around, if you want to have a quick look. So once we get a piece of land, we will park the bus, we will park the kitchen, we will move the dome, set it up there. We're gonna buy a new greenhouse that's like a hybrid system that it's in the summer. It has like a reflective flap, so we open and we can use the sunlight. And then in the winter we close it and we use lights. So I don't want to use electricity all year. I want it to be smart. So when we have sun, we're gonna use sun. And when we don't have sun, then we will use electricity. Although it has taken Ben a considerable amount of time and energy to gain support for his project, local perceptions about growing are slowly changing. So what do you think about it? Do you think it's worth trying to grow vegetables here versus shipping them in from the mainland? Yeah, definitely. It's a step in the right direction to become more sustainable. So it's cool. It's a cool thought. I think people also worry about the environmental footprint that we make while living here. And we've been nice to reduce that. Since we've been doing this, there's been so many unintended consequences. Now everybody's trying to grow food and everybody's inspired to do something different. And they're all growing base and they're all sharing pictures of it and the University of Trump so people came here and they're like all PhDs and professors and this and that and they came here and they said, wow, if he can do this, we can do it. So now they want to set up some growing stuff in Trump so they're gonna name it after me as well. So this little project is inspiring so many other people and making people think that it's possible. You don't have to wait for it. What are we waiting for? That's the thing. What are we waiting for? We need to do it now. That's what we're doing for Trump. We're working to do it now.


as a bill by any member of the General Assembly. So of course, no way that we're precluding a discussion on it, but this is, we've been put into a different posture like the clock running out, et cetera. So, Mr. Martland, let's see if you're... Yes, can you hear me now? Yes, sir. I apologize about that. I had to change the microphone setting. So you were correct, Mr. Chair. The scenario is you have a law on the books that is currently valid. A case has just been filed and may challenge it, but the law is currently valid. It has not been overturned nor has it been stayed. And you will, you should operate under that law and that law clearly states a one-body resolution is sufficient to disapprove this executive order. If this committee or any other committee wants to go into the constitutional issues, we'd be glad to, but I don't think you need to for purposes of considering this executive order. Okay. Thank you. Anyone else in the room have a question that's emerged out of listening to this morning's testimony? Whether we can get an answer right now like that or if it requires research, then we can ask the Ledge Council to come back or others to come back to us in the future. Senator McCormick. Thanks. Luke, were the statute under which we operate to be found unconstitutional? How would that finding affect action that we had previously taken under the now unconstitutional statute? I think it would depend whether the whole chapter is held unconstitutional or only parts thereof. In other words, whether there's a severability analysis applied, so that would be relevant. It also might depend on the court's ruling. So it's hard to predict. I don't know if it would invalidate what you've done. If you pass a resolution disapproving the EO, it doesn't go into effect. And so nothing would change. If you allow the executive order to go into effect and then the statute is held unconstitutional, maybe there would be repercussions but would just have to see. And please remember that we've advised you that if you allow the executive order to go into effect, you should amend other statutes to make sure they conform to the executive order. We want everything to be harmonious. We don't want conflicts between the executive order and statute down the road. I just wanna make sure I've got it. If, hypothetically, and I understand I'm asking for a conjecture, hypothetically, one house disapproves the executive order. The other house remains silent. Under the present statute, that would invalidate the executive order. Were the court later to then decide that that one house provision is unconstitutional? Would the executive order then go into effect? Negative, I do not believe so. It would still be disallowed. Yes. Even though the disallowing was unconstitutional. Yes, and I think we're getting a little far afield. We can talk about this in more detail if you want to go into those issues. But I would think that if the statute is held unconstitutional, the whole statute falls, which includes the mechanism to bring an EO to the general assembly to reorganize the executive branch. Okay, I would hope, Mr. Chairman, maybe not now but I would like to go deeper into this. Hypothetically, were we to decide that we don't like the executive order? I would want us to make sure to err on the side of caution that we did it in a way that would be sustained regardless. Well, two houses would be better than one. Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Thank you. And Representative Dolan and then Representative LeFave. Just a quick question. Is there a difference between an executive order and a bill with respect to the constitutionality issues that were raised? I can see obviously with a bill we the legislature has a constitutional role there with a bicameral to two house approach to passing that bill. But when you're dealing with an executive order is there a, is it treated differently under the whole question of constitutionality? I think that's the crux of the issue. And so once again, we're glad to talk about the constitutional issues. I think there's good arguments on either side but I think there's a gray area there and Representative Dolan that would be one of the key questions is the same bicameral requirement apply or not. But once again, we're sort of backing into this extended conversation. So if you wanna go into it, we can reappear before any committee and go into it in detail. And you can hear from the executive branch but I had the impression that Chair just sort of wanted to lay out issues at this point. So I don't wanna end up going on and on and getting into it in depth that that's okay. Right, so thank you. It's a good question. And well, I think we're obviously a complicated one. So well, the two committees will make decisions about how to dig into this further. Representative Lefebvre. Yes, thank you. Is there any right line that we could go by to determine whether or not an executive order has surpassed a reorganization? Helen, do you wanna take that? I think that's something you touched on earlier. Yeah, so I think the answer is no. I think that reorganization is not defined under the statute 3VSA 2002. And I think there are arguments, there can be multiple arguments made about what falls into that specifically. So there hasn't been any case law further defining it. So we don't have a bright line now. Okay. Thank you. I have a question, Ms. Smith this morning cited, it was an interesting thing she brought up. I think it was Act 246, if I'm remembering, the law that established this ability to reorganize in 3VSA 2002, et cetera, or Chapter 41. And it talked about things like increasing responsiveness to the public, et cetera. Anyway, there were some features in there that they were in findings, I believe, in that original law. And I'm wondering about the, to what degree do the findings of that law influence are they just informational for us, or do they have any kind of legal force? Like do they create in essence a set of criteria against which we could judge the suitability or unsuitability of the proposal currently front of us. Is that a question you want us to answer? Are you throwing that on the table for me? Yeah, I would like to hear from council on that one. I just don't know if how to use that information that's contained in the original legislation that is driving the whole thing today. I think it's something you certainly could look at if you wish. I mean, legislative findings are intended to either give background on why you're passing a bill, why you think it's important, and or how that bill should be interpreted if there's litigation or applied in the real world. So yes, you can absolutely look at legislative findings and sometimes courts look at legislative findings to understand how a bill should be interpreted and applied. So you could look at them. They're not binding. They're not like the substantive codified law that says what people can do or not do. So it's a little different, but you could look at them. Okay, thank you. Also, I would just quickly add, I looked at them. I didn't fully dive deep and spend a lot of time on them, but I did look to see if they clarify reorganization at all. And I did not see at least initially anything further clarifying that aspect. So Ms. Smith was referencing sort of an interesting tie to the citizens of Vermont, which sort of tied into Act 250. And that was sort of a different issue, but I don't think it at least initially didn't strike me as helping further define what is included in reorganization. Okay, thank you. Anyone else have any question you wanna get on the table, whether we're trying to answer it now or just identify some things for us to learn a little more about before when we come back to this? All right, I'm not seeing any other hands and it is title 12, so that was a goal. Representative LeFave. No, fine, thank you. Okay, so with that, I'd just like to say thank you to everyone for participating this morning and deepening the conversation. And I will be in touch with Chair Sheldon and so that we try to keep the two committees a little bit in sync as we work, even though there are individual questions to each committee. So it's good to see you all and thanks for pitching in as a, it was a perfect opportunity to have a joint meeting. So thank you again.