This time round, before as well as during and after the election, the right-wing kept hanging the threat of an electoral fraud always-already happened. This is still an election, but it sets boundaries like: giving in to the fascist coup of the right and the North American and Zionist empire in the context of a third world war – or going beyond the limits of the bourgeois democratic revolution and consolidating the Bolivarian revolution. To leap, that is to say, from the Revolutionary State over to the Workers State.
From its history and since Hugo Chávez’ time, Venezuela has had its particularities and its social, economic and political victories. Venezuela suffers under 600 sanctions and boycotts from the United States and Europe, the theft of its gold and refineries by the US (and UK), plus seven right-wing coup attempts and several assassinations attempts against Chávez and Maduro. In the face of all this, the Bolivarian government expropriated the oil oligarchy, nationalized PDVSA[1] and structured a popular state. It ended illiteracy and promoted universal culture with cheap books for the citizens. It built 5 million homes for a population of 35 million. It improves on food provision as it becomes self-sufficient and cuts down on the imports. The Bolivarian government produced vaccines, like Cuba, with whom it cooperates excellently. And let’s not forget how, during the pandemic, Venezuela sent medical trucks for free over to Brazil (via the Amazonia). Where is the dictatorship? That of the popular power, workers and peasants? That of the communes[2]? That of the citizen militias[3] organized in the wake of the Unified Socialist Party of Venezuela PSUV, alongside the nationalist army, defender of the Revolutionary State built by Colonel Chávez? Nothing to do then, with the fascism of the “guarimbas”[4] of Edmundo González and Maria Corina Machado[5].
Maria Corina Gonzalez is a coup leader who announced in the past that Juan Guaidó[6] was president of Venezuela – the same Guaidó who is now on the run after having appropriated Venezuelan goods. Edmundo González is a CIA agent who has now disappeared from view; when the Electoral Justice Chamber summoned the former candidates of the respective parties to come and present any proof of electoral fraud, González refused to appear, and in defiance of the Supreme Court. There was another occasion at which he did not show up. The farcical game of the right-wing Plataforma Unitaria Democratica (PUD) had collapsed. All it had wanted was to infect the electoral platform with its trolls of conspiracies and coups d’état.
It is an error for sectors of the left to describe Venezuela as a dictatorship. They often refer to emigration and ask: why do so many Venezuelans leave for other countries? Let’s have no illusions: in Venezuela, an internal offensive is under way, with the use of terrorism against the population. It murders Chavistas, destroys schools, strikes at the social amenities. This causes thousands of Venezuelans to emigrate, but this exodus is not particular to Venezuela. You find thousands from Latin and South America amongst the migrants. And about the election in Venezuela, when did you see someone going round countries, round the US as under Trump for instance, to collect the ‘minutes’ of their fake elections?
Regarding these elections, the position of Lula and of the Brazilian government[7] is that Maduro should call a new election. Here is the same Lula that suffered, and continues to suffer, the effects of the coup against his investiture on 8 January 2023 at the Planalto Palace. Besides his position showing naivety, it violates the Federal Constitution of Brazil of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries. As it turns out, the Workers Party of Brazil (PT) sent out its immediate and unanimous recognition of Nicolás Maduro’s victory. A debate needs to be opened and deepened in PT for it to preserve its independence in relation to the government. And on the behalf of the Brazilian workers, PT must reject the practice of government diplomacy without popular consultation. PT must lead vigorous debates in the assemblies; it must not accept the limitation of political functioning to Internet networks and fake news. Veritable democracy is more than bulletins in ballot boxes.
It is absurd and unconstitutional to wave the flag of false democracy in the internal affairs of another country like Venezuela. On the part of the Brazilian government, this has been an error, and a self-harming one. It conceded to the internal pressure of the Brazilian conservatives and gave a boost to the international right-wing. And then, why propose the regression of the Venezuelan Revolutionary State towards a bourgeois coalition government with a fascist opposition? The correct electoral tactic of alliance with bourgeois sectors that gave the victory to Lula does not mean it (tactic) does not have to pass from popular government to Revolutionary State. This applies even if without an explicit socialist objective, Lula only defines an inclusive and Revolutionary State, free of the power of international finances, free of the lootings, free of the privatizations of the natural resources. On returning from observing the elections, the MST[8] leader J. P. Stedile declared: “The class struggle continues”. He supports the Lula government and its indisputable progressive measures, but he does not leave off calling for Agrarian Reform, along with the struggle to defend familial agriculture against agribusiness.
In Venezuela, the Bolivarian government has the parliamentary majority needed to keep moving forward; in Brazil, the stability of the government is threatened by the lack of majority on the part of PT and the progressive forces. To say nothing of the portion of the electoral base which is still linked to the armed militias of the right-wing; the latter have managed to keep Bolsonaro unpunished with all their attacks on the minister and judge Alexandre de Moraes[9]. There is also the power of the Globo’s hegemonic media, and that of Elon Musk’s networks, they who imposed Milei on Argentina. Through their destabilizing and their visibly proliferating “trolls” and “influencers” in Venezuela, they orchestrated and financed this coup against Maduro.
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https://orinocotribune.com/venezuela-successfully-holds-second-national-popular-consultation/
The Opening of the Second National Popular Consultation: 26.8.24.
In his regular TV program “Maduro Plus (+)“ on VTV – a bit like Hugo Chávez’s “Aló Presidente” and López Obrador’s “DawnNews” – Nicolás Maduro meets the “Comuneros”[10]. These are the rank-and-file leaders of neighbourhoods and municipalities, plus peasants, scientists and artists. Together, they have prepared the “Second Great Popular Consultation” to take place on 26 August. (It took place, as shown in the link just above). There are 4 such popular consultations per year. They are something akin to the “Participatory Budget” in Brazil.
Maduro insists that “this is the time for revolutionary advance”. He retakes Hugo Chávez’ main lines in Chavez’ Five Objectives of Socialism in the 21st century[11]: political, economic, spiritual and moral (the new human being), social Missiones and Socialism in the territories of the country. Maduro insists on the need to keep moving from representative democracy to participatory democracy. “Faced with fascism, we must move forward with more popular power” he says. He quotes Che Guevara who said: “You cannot go to socialism with the same weapons as capitalism“. Now Maduro calls for communal democracy against bureaucratism.
The media war is part of the coup against the democratic and electoral process in Venezuela
On top of the political error in the Lula government’s call for new elections in Venezuela, there is an unjustifiable deficit of information and communication. The deficit is about the facts of the election in Venezuela, and about a coup of a national and international reach in that electoral context. Telesur had retransmitted in direct the massive demonstration of one million people on the last day of the campaign in support of Maduro. Over the following week, meetings and communiqués of the Bolivarian government had exposed the truth, and the facts, to the world. The National Electoral Council (CNE) had published the discovery of false accounts and ‘minutes’ used by the opposition to pretend it had won. On their website and under a mention called “minutes”, it had published incomplete and illegible entries, some dead who voted, a lack of data on the members of the polling stations, uncheckable signatures. Jorge Rodriguez, the campaign manager for the Great Patriotic Pole GPP had denounced this ‘evidence’; and he had shown with proper proofs, that the opposition had only dealt with 10,000 ‘minutes’ out of the 30,000, i.e. 30% of the total.
Historically secure, the electronic electoral system had been audited as always. The 10 candidates and participating parties had checked the system and signed their accord with the installation. But the ‘hacking’ did not happen there. The CNE denounced that cyber-criminal attacks led from Miami had sought to generate an ‘information blackout’, invasions of results on the dissemination platforms, the State platform and the internet services of the Republic – to provoke a coup d’état. Maduro had denounced the manipulation of the communication networks by attackers through applications like X, Tik-tok, with calls to continue voting, followed by threats, calls for ‘guarimbas’, talks of total power outage.
The computer failure continues (20.8.24). None of this is published by the hegemonic media in the hands of international finance. The truth is not being transmitted. On Sat 17 August, the majority of the Venezuelan people took to the streets again: a total of two million turned up in 100 cities to celebrate Maduro’s victory and to keep the peace. It is the streets also that the fascist right behind the ‘opposition’ of fugitive Edmundo González and Corina Machado had its failure: it did not gather more than one thousand persons in a square.
Among the other summits and press releases that Telesur had kept broadcasting, there were those from the National Security Council, with the members of the Armed Forces and the public security agencies. There were also those organized by the Civil-Military militias. These had documented with videos and evidence all the various attacks of the “guarimbeiros”, the violent youth groups funded by the United States, destroying schools, hospitals, universities, subway stations, airports, historic statues, threatening to kill the president and Chavist political leaders, brandishing heavy weapons, terrorizing people, causing the death of 25 people and 192 injured during this period.
The very same terrorist actions are continuing. Lula’s proposal for new elections was not accepted by Corina Machado – and not even by Biden who shows how little he differs from Trump. It is for violent destabilization that those people have opted instead. See how in these times of war, no one stops the hand of Israel in Gaza. Lula’s attempts to approach Biden to discuss Venezuela are dangerous, (https://www.france24.com/en/americas/20240731-lula-biden-venezuela-presidential-election-results). It was Obama, let’s not forget, who said: “Lula is the Man”. That was when Obama was plotting against Brazil, against Petrobras and against former President Dilma. Here you have Zionist imperialism, and it has no ethics. It respects no accords and it respects no laws. The [then] Mexican President López Obrador did well when he accepted the results of the National Electoral Council of Venezuela.
The elections in Venezuela ‘polarise’ internally in line with this global context. At international level, Maduro has decided to confront American imperialism which finances one of the greatest genocides in the history of humanity, against the Palestinian people. That same imperialism uses Ukraine to attack Russia. It has destroyed Yugoslavia, Libya, Iraq. It threatens Syria and Iran. It organized not only the overthrow of Dilma Rousseff, but the Judicial war against Lula, and now against Alexandre de Moraes and the Brazilian Supreme Federal Court, who have had to review the mistakes and retrieve the democracy.
The national and international polarisation expressed in the Venezuelan process is the reflection of the actual world balance of forces. Russia, China, Cuba, Iran and more than 50 countries have already recognized Nicolás Maduro as the elected president of Venezuela. The economic and political crisis of global capitalism shows in the forward march of the multipolar world; it is expressed in the crisis of the petrodollar, this hegemonic currency losing ballast. It shows in the extension of the BRICS where the world’s largest oil producers draw together and trade with China; Saudi Arabia escaping the dollar; Putin beckoning Maduro in the process of integrating Venezuela into the BRICS.
The BRICS members further the development of their economic whole, in the manner of an alternative, part of a movement towards de-dollarization. When Gaddafi talked about breaking with the Euro and creating a new currency, NATO and the United States threw themselves at Libya. The BRICS enterprise will face challenges, but it is essential to win a greater development and stability for the emerging economies. The level of Israel’s genocide against Gaza (40,000 Palestinians killed), and the attack on Russia through Ukraine with NATO support, are signs of despair and unpredictability in what could happen towards a nuclear conflict. Putin is set to continue with the denazification of Ukraine, in defence of Russia and in defence of the memory of the USSR. The USSR whose resistance was decisive in the triumph against Nazi fascism. Maduro puts Latin America in tune with Russia and China when he says: “Nazism was born in the face of the advance of the USSR and socialism“. “We are on the correct side of history. Fascism will not pass.”[12]
With its largest oil and gas reserves in the world, Venezuela plays a prime role in global geopolitics. The United States will do everything to seize this wealth – so essential to the survival of the so-called ‘developed’ countries – the same as the US tries to do against Brazil with Petrobras and the support the US gives to Temer and Bolsonaro. The next BRICS meeting to open in Venezuela under the slogan “Building a better world together” is a blow to the hegemony of imperialism. The latter prepares the war therefore, and coups d’état, as in Latin America. Lula’s Brazil must not fall into the imperialist trap. The unity Venezuela-Brazil and the re-establishment of Unasur are key to Latin American leadership, and needed to weaken puppets like Milei in the government of Argentina.
There is a huge deficit of leadership – a deficit in the revolutionary parties and movements of the world. This goes on being the difficulty in front of the great historic objectives that Hugo Chávez had announced, like the construction of an instrument of debate and coordination of the world revolutionary avant-garde: a Fifth International. In spite of major attacks on Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro brought together the Communes of the neighbourhoods. And he quoted a phrase from Trotsky, to which Chávez also referred in March 2006: “Trotsky said: every revolution needs the whip of the counter-revolution. Throw whips and we will endure. And with each blow, we will respond by deepening the revolution”.
We have been witnessing the rich experience, and not only electoral, as transmitted by Telesur, of the resistance and construction of the PSUV (Socialist Party of Venezuela). We see Popular Power being organised in Venezuela to defend the Bolivarian Revolution, to progress the Revolutionary State as it transits towards the construction of 21st century socialism. All this should be on the Agenda, not of the UN, but of a Fifth International.
Putin, Xi-Jiping, Diaz Canel, Maduro, Lula, Obrador, Claudia Sheinbaum, Cristina Kirchner, Xiomara, Petro, Arce-Evo, Rafael Correa, the leaders of Africa (Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso), Vietnam, Iran, Palestine, the European left – in short, the global vanguard of social and trade union movements and peasants – must unite. They must discuss tactics, strategies and programs in the fight for socialism in order to face the decisive phases of the world war.
Editorial committee of PosadistasHoje, Brazil, 20.8.24
Feature image: Maduro celebrates his electoral victory with the Venezuelan people.
About the Participatory Budgets in Brazil, see: https://www.peoplepowered.org/news-content/participatory-budgeting-in-brazil
[1] PDVSA Petróleos de Venezuela SA. The oil industry was nationalised in Venezuela on 1 January 1976 under the left-wing nationalist Carlos Andrés Perez. This was done at the site of the Zumaque oilwell 1 (Mene Grande), and along with it came the birth of Petróleos de Venezuela S.A. (PDVSA) which is the Venezuelan state-owned petroleum company. Extracts from Wikipedia.
[2] On 6 December 2022, there were almost 50,000 registered Communes in Venezuela.
[3] In 2008, the government of then President Hugo Chávez passed a law creating what is known as the Bolivarian militia (Milicia Bolivariana). It is a reserve force composed by civilian volunteers supplementing the ordinary branches of the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (Fuerza Armada Nacional Bolivariana-FANB). https://www.cmi.no/publications/5676-servants-of-the-nation-defenders-of-la-patria.
[4] Guarimbas is a term colloquially used in Venezuela to describe delinquent protest methods used by the right-wing opposition. It involves setting public assets on fire (buses, distribution centres, gas delivery vehicles, billboards, tyres), erecting road blocks to stop food and goods delivery, attacking physically those who defy them. Masked persons with no out-front pollical demands build rubbish mounds in the streets to litter, or to make barricades, or to set them on fire. In February 2015, Gisella Rubilar was shot and killed by men in balaclavas on a motorbike, while she was helping to clean up. Hundreds of communal council members, PSUV and PCV activists and more, have joined in 5am clean-ups, sometimes singing to Ali Primera as they do, while opposition supporters watch on, boo, and yell at them. On 16.2.2015, 40 deaths were listed by Venezuela Analysis, 20 of these were police. https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/11211/ –
[5] What the imperialist media of the European countries call ‘civil insurrection’ in Venezuela, is a small movement whose project is to return Venezuela to colonial status, a status that used to make them rich.
[6] Juan Guaidó: In December 2022, the right-wing opposition parties – who had previously tried to have Maduro assassinated – voted to dismiss their previous hero Guaidó from the post of ‘interim president’, a post they had invented for him. This dismissal did not just put an end to Guaidó’s presidential claim, but to the US and the European Union’s illusion that they are still able to name the Presidents of Venezuela.
[7] On 15 August 2024, the Brazilian president Lula doubted that Maduro had won the elections. He suggested that Venezuela should hold fresh elections to resolve, he said, “the controversy stemming from the 28 July polls”. Lula received some support from Gustavo Petro of Colombia and from AMLO of Mexico. Since then however, Petro has fallen silent; and Claudia Sheinbaum who became president of Mexico meanwhile, decided to invite not only Nicolás Maduro to her inauguration, but Vladimir Putin as well.
[8] MST is the vast Landless Workers Movement in Brazil – one of the largest and most-influential social movements in Latin America (Wikipedia). One MST leader, Joao Pedro Stedile, condemns Lula’s lack of ambition in terms of Land Reform. This year, the MST will launche more than 700 pre-candidates to contest the 2024 municipal elections in October.
[9] During Bolsonaro’s presidency, 2019-2022, he issued a series of decrees to circumvent parliament, one of them in a bid to give immunity from prosecution to the security forces. Judge Moraes ordered mafia-related investigations into several of the president’s allies.
[10] The Second National Popular Consultation was convened by the National Electoral Commission (CEN) on 26 August 2024. The first Consultation of the year had taken place in April. In the various polling centres of the country. CEN coordinated 4,505 communal circuits with the Ministry for Communes and Social Movements. At the El Panal Commune, for instance, steady lines of voters filled the polling centre throughout the day. According to CEN, 30,784 projects were nationally registered for this consultation, to create construction brigades and carry out maintenance work, instal internet, create more communal veterinary centres, purchase garbage containers, agree transport routes, expand the distribution of gas, water, electricity, etc. https://venezuelanalysis.com/images/popular-democracy-at-work-at-el-panal-commune-and-across-venezuela/
[11] Read: https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/10214/ – The Five Objectives include “Preserving Venezuela’s Independence”, “Building Socialism”, “Turning Venezuela into a Social, Economic and Political Power”, “Promoting International Multipolarity”, and “Preserving Peace on the Planet and the Human Species”. These 5 objectives were approved into law by the National Assembly on 4.12.2013, and have remained the aims of the Bolivarian revolution.
[12] See: https://venezuelanalysis.com/interviews/venezuela-a-beacon-against-fascism-a-conversation-with-javier-couso/
