Umsebenzi Online, Volume 14, No. 52, 1 December 2015
In this issue:
* Venezuelan National Assembly elections hotly contested but perhaps
more so externally
Field Work:
Venezuelan National Assembly elections hotly contested, externally too
BY UMSEBENZI ONLINE FIELD WORK
CARACAS, VENEZUELA, Sunday 6 December 2015; 23:10 (South Africa, Monday 7
December 2015; 5:40 CAT)
Venezuelans have on Sunday 6 December 2015 cast their votes in the country’s
crucial national assembly elections. They are now waiting for the results
which could be known in hours’ time.
On Saturday 5 December 2015 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who looked
confident addressed the media and elections observer missions, including
several former presidents and high profile politicians from across the
world. This at a press conference and welcoming ceremony for the observers
held at the Presidential Palace in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital.
President Maduro urged former South American Presidents to engage with
opposition parties to accept the outcome of the elections no matter which
way they go. He stated that Venezuela’s revolutionary movement, comprising
of the 5.7 million member strong United Socialist Party of Venezuela which
he is leading and an array of other left and socialist parties and social
movements, including the Communist Party of Venezuela, long accepted the
will of the people.
Showing Venezuela’s constitution, President Maduro asserted that his
movement and government respects, and is in the first place the product of
the will of the people. He contrasted this belief in democracy to a failed
2002 coup d'état (undemocratic change of government) staged by a line-up of
opposition forces. A trade union strike in the petroleum industry was
decreed, he recounted, and then the strike was redirected toward the
Presidential Palace and used to stage the failed coup.
In this same hall, President Maduro said, the coup leaders sworn themselves.
But they were afraid of Simon Bolivar as many still are (Bolivar is the
founder of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the country’s national
hero) even though he is long dead, he said. The coup leaders removed
Bolivar’s portrait, the one behind me, he pointed at it on the wall. They
hid it somewhere in the basement, he said. One of the first things they were
then to do was to remove the name Bolivarian from the full name of the
Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, he said. It was through the will of the
people, he stressed, that the coup was defeated. That is how it failed, said
President Maduro.
“We do not want any further violence in our country because we have
experienced it before. We know what that means. Some people say if we lose
we will go ‘back’ to the streets. There is no need for us to do that. We
have been in the streets talking to, working together and campaigning with
our people. We will not abandon them by disappearing away from them simply
because of an election results. Whatever they say from the election, we will
respect it. We will accept the results no matter what the outcome is because
we have faith in our people and democracy”: he said.
He said: “There were 19 elections including major referendums held in this
country since our current constitution was adopted in 1999. This is the
extent to which we are committed to democracy. Our democratic state is not
made up by some institutions away from the people. On the contrary, through
this participatory democracy and their direct involvement in democratic
decision-making the people are very much an important arm of our state”.
The build-up to the Venezuelan national assembly elections revealed an
extra-heavy contestation both in the country and outside. The United States
and Western European media lined up behind the opposition in many ways and
for a long time. This was the view echoed by concerned members of the public
in the streets, further saying they do not trust those and privately owned
local media that according to them either serve or are controlled by those
who are backing the opposition. Rather, they prefer their own active citizen
and community media.
United States and Western European media are seen by these concerned
citizens as having declared the opposition the winner in advance using what
they refer to as “the so-called surveys” – which suggest the opposition will
win the elections. This was a cause for serious concern and risked fuelling
internal destabilisation in a country with the world’s largest oil reserves
– what the United States and its European allies are seen as interests in.
One of the citizens said some of the former bosses in the petroleum company
that has now been transferred in national hands under-priced oil when they
were in charge before then, this as part of corrupt activities including
selling oil as if they were selling bitumen. This benefited the United
States and some of its European allies, he claimed. He said it was after
progressive changes were adopted under former President Hugo Chavez and they
were removed that the 2002 petroleum strike, leading to a failed coup, was
co-ordinated.
But the other reason why the elections proved to be a challenge is that oil
prices have been falling – as a result of the post-2008 international
capitalist system crisis that remains persistent. This weighs heavily on
Venezuela, a country which derives much of its national revenue from oil.
In addition, there are fundamental economic transformation issues that
Venezuela, like South Africa and many other developing countries is yet to
address. With the production of a wide range of many consumer, and basic,
goods and services in private, and often foreign, hands, the Venezuelan
economy is vulnerable to many forms of production- and exchange-related
attacks. It is some of these attacks, according to one citizen, that have
led to shortages in certain products.
* Umsebenzi Online Field Work, reporting from Caracas, Venezuela
Umsebenzi Online is an online voice of the South African working class
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UMSEBENZI ONLINE IS THE VOICE OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN WORKING CLASS
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