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Inept Government Leadership Caused “Inadequate Triumph” in Elections

Marea Socialista, a militant current within the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), analyses the National Assembly Election results, arguing that the bureaucracy within the government was a main cause of the “inadequate triumph”.

The admirable battle [the name given to the PSUV’s election campaign] could have ended in defeat, if President Chavez hadn’t once again taken the electoral campaign on his shoulders. If that hadn’t happened, the results would have been worse. What are the reasons for this inadequate triumph? Why could a discredited right wing without ideas achieve so many votes? Why didn’t the revolutionary people come out with enthusiasm and strength to seek an overwhelming victory? What are the warnings the people have given? It is necessary to reverse the disappointment in our ranks and motivate all the exploited people so that they can be a containment wall to the counter-revolution. It’s time to get to the heart of the debate between the workers and the revolutionary people. There’s still time, but tomorrow could be too late.

The fact that we have obtained the majority of the positions mustn’t be used to hide the difficult situation that we find ourselves in after the elections. The right wing legislators aren’t the ones who can put the continuation of the revolutionary process at risk. The election showed that our own leaders are the ones who didn’t know how to motivate or mobilise the revolutionary people in order to firmly defeat the anachronistic right which doesn’t have ideas and defends the old capitalist system.

They reproduced the old clientelist scheme, without promoting debate or discussion, using positions that were decided behind closed doors, dis-organising and combating the most critical and creative militants of our people. The leadership of the party and of the campaign disregarded the warnings the Bolivarian people were giving them. They were never able to understand that the achievements of the revolution are associated with popular power, our people’s disposition for change and a government fundamentally personalised by Hugo Chavez.  And by abusing their privileges, they put even the credibility of the president at risk.

The ineptitude of this leadership meant they were unable to listen to the people’s demands for rectification. They very quickly forgot, or didn’t want to listen to, the call for a cleanup and for more revolution that thundered from [the presidential palace] Miraflores on the morning of 3 December 2007 [after the defeat of the constitutional referendum]. They maintained the old Fourth Republic [before Chavez] habits, treating the people as if they were just merchandise that you can buy with a favour or benefit in the week before or the day of the elections, they almost provoked a defeat, something that can only be hidden because in the distribution of seats we came out better off.

Nevertheless, the popular feeling isn’t one of triumph, as they would have us believe in the public press. Of course, nothing that the right wing and its press says is true, but there’s something we need to analyse; continuing along this path and with this bureaucratic behaviour we get closer and closer to losing the process and even the government. That is, we would be applying the “operation demolition” [another name for the PSUV campaign] to ourselves. It’s time to say, ‘enough’.  It’s time to demand President Chavez apply the three Rs [the government’s line of ‘revision, rectification, and re-launch’] so that the popular cry for “clean up and more revolution” can be complied with.

They try to hide the high costs and the inflation that mostly affects the most humble people. They try to use numbers and graphics to cover up the deterioration that the grand conquests of the revolution, such as advances in health and social rights, have suffered. They, the bureaucrats, take the country to the high of electric chaos [referring to the electricity black outs and rationing last year and at the start of this year] because they didn’t want the workers of that sector to participate. In the end it was proven that the workers are capable of successfully confronting the crisis.

These bureaucrats, specialists in converting easy victories into ridiculous failures, are the same people who dismissed the experiences of worker control, the same people who didn’t want to vote for a new labour law, the same ones who pass from clique to clique in order to hold onto the best positions in the government, to obtain the highest privileges. They are the ones who aren’t bothered by the murder of hundreds of social, rural, and worker leaders, and cover up the corrupt right and boss-hired murders with impunity. They are the ones who have public employees’ collective agreements stalled, among others. They are the ones who accuse those who struggle for their rights as being counter-revolutionary, while they themselves live with a similar or higher level than the piti-yankee bourgeoisie and oligarchs who they say they are fighting against.

In this way they help to strengthen the insipid and tasteless right wing, that doesn’t have any new ideas nor can it even explain its old ones. Contributing to the opening up of a counter-revolutionary exit, they are the ones who best work for the Yankees and imperialism. Because they do it as a 5th column within our own camp. [A fifth column is a term from history that refers to a group of people who clandestinely undermine a larger group, from within, in order to help an external enemy].

Right now, the revolutionary people, its consequent revolutionary sector, the left of the [PSUV] party, we need to organise to be able to confront the falsely democratic right, and of course, our own bureaucracy too. If not, the process will lose in the worse possible way: because of disillusion and disappointment.

This is why Marea Socialista is calling on the revolutionary people, on the workers, and on the popular sectors and principled social movements, to struggle to radicalise the revolution.

We call on the National Union of Workers [Unete] and the social organisations and the popular movements to struggle to establish the necessary measures in order to deepen the revolution.

Approve the Labour Law presented by UNETE, the unions, and federations. Concretise an urgent increase in salaries and introduce an adjustable scale. Open the way for the discussion of all the stalled collective agreements, all of which are in the public sector. Approve a socialist health law, one that is debated and created together with the collectives of that area, and with the workers and the communities. Mobilize people to struggle to bring an end to hired killings and impunity.

It’s necessary to fight today for these measures, among others. We beat the right wing in the street. If there are bureaucratic sectors who reflect, we’ll do it united in action, and if not, we’ll do what we can. Because this much is clear, comrades; what is coming is the joropo [Colombian/Venezuelan folk dance] wearing the alpargatas [very cheap shoes] of the revolution!

Caracas, 27 September 2010

Statement signed by the editing committee of Marea Socialista: Stalin Pérez Borges, Gonzalo Gómez, Carlos Miranda, Juan Afonso, Norman A. Boscan, Zuleyka Matamoros, Tomás Rodríguez, Vilma Vivas, Franklin Zambrano, Luisana Melo, Roberto López, Alexis Peña, Nani Borges, Wilmer Aguilar, Nieves Tamaroni, José Meléndez, Daniel Rodríguez, Igor Alcalá, Gustavo Martínez, Ismael Hernández, Christian Pereira, Rubén Linares, Tomás García, María Auxiliadora Castillo, Osman Cañizales, Jesús Vargas, William Porras, Vicente Osorio, Efrén Méndez, Ángel Narváez, Andrea Pacheco, Alexander Marín, Joseth Chávez, Karol Sánchez, William Serafino, Lucero Benítez

Translation by Tamara Pearson for Venezuelanalysis.com