Socialist Party of Venezuela’s Electoral Campaign Includes Political Training

Merida, July 15^th, 2010 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) electoral campaign leaders met yesterday to evaluate the progress of the first stage of their electoral campaign for the parliamentary elections on September 26 and to plan the second stage.

Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela and of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), attended the meeting along with the 24 state campaign heads and the 87 district campaign heads.

The national leadership of the party as well as its candidates to the legislative elections on 26 September also participated.

The objective of the meeting was to discuss the first stage of the party’s electoral campaign, which it has called, ‘Organisation and Consciousness’.

This stage involves organising PSUV members into 36,603 “patrols” and 12,471 “units”. Patrols should have an average of 50 members and will correspond to the voting booths, while the units will correspond to the electoral centres and be made up of around 11 members. In total the PSUV leadership is aiming to have 2.07 million party members involved in the campaign.

Until yesterday, Anzoategui was the leading state in terms of forming the patrols, with 77.1% formed so far. Barinas had formed 76.9% of its patrols, and Delta Amacuro 70.3%, for a nationwide average of 61.4%.

The second campaign stage is set to run from 26 July to 25 August, when actual electoral campaigning is allowed to begin. During these months, each member of the patrols will visit 10 other PSUV members in order to discuss the electoral campaign and to “bring the revolutionary message to them,” PSUV press stated.

The meeting also discussed methods to raise the political understanding of party members. According to PSUV press, the party has so far conducted over 700 workshops around the country to address this.

Electoral campaign head for the PSUV, Aristobulo Isturiz, reported to the meeting on the progress of stage 1. He said that raising consciousness is important, as “the majority could be defeated if it doesn’t constitute a force, so it is necessary to organise this majority and give it all the tools so that it has political clarity.

“Consciousness is necessary in order to feel history beating. We need powerful consciousness, as from there comes everything else; organisation, deployment, battle, and victory,” Chavez said.

He also said that the second stage of the electoral campaign needs to advance, but without losing sight of the international situation, marked by a possible nuclear attack against Iran and the installation of new US military bases in Latin America.

“We shouldn’t focus only on the parliamentary elections because they could surprise us with a regrettable event. That’s how imperialism is,” Chavez said.