O Controle Exercido pelo Poder Constituinte do Povo sobre as Reformas Constitucionais por Meio do Referendo, na América Latina

Abstract

Nowadays has been recognized the ownership of the constituent power to the people, it is a sovereign power, unconditioned and unlimited. Unlike the prevailing doctrine of Sieyès and Monstesquieu, the constituent power is not replaced by the constitutionally constituted power, it remains active, supervising and controlling it. Among the characteristics present in the new Latin American constitutionalism, is the effective popular participation in the constituent process and reform of the Constitution, especially through the referendum. The Constitutions currently in force in Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador and Venezuela provides the establishment of the referendum as a form of the exercise of the participatory democracy, in which the sovereign power of the people gives the last word on any change that is intended to be made in the original constitutional project. The Federal Constitution of Brazil, promulgated in 1988, despite foreseeing forms of direct democracy in its article 14, among these the referendum, these mechanisms still have a very reduced use, and therefore it is being proposed in this article that the democratic ideals present in the Constitutions of the countries that integrate the new Latin American constitutionalism, to be applied in Brazil, through the migration of ideas, realizing a true discursive integration. In this context, the current proposals for constitutional amendments in Brazil, which intend to implement social security and labor reforms, as well as the constitutional amendment that established a ceiling on public expenditures, would need to be submitted to the popular referendum, especially because it has the capacity of causing a great setback in social rights.