Great Patriotic Pole to Construct New Hegemony within Bolivarian Revolution
The purpose of the recently formed Great Patriotic Pole (GPP) will be to establish a “new hegemony” within the Bolivarian revolution, said the Vice-president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Francisco Arias Cardenas this past Saturday.
Caracas, January 30th 2012 (Venezuelanalysis.com) – The purpose of the recently formed Great Patriotic Pole (GPP) will be to establish a “new hegemony” within the Bolivarian revolution, said the Vice-president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Francisco Arias Cardenas this past Saturday.
Making the comments from an event in Zulia in the west of Venezuela, Cardenas said that this new revolutionary hegemony would be the result of a meeting between “participatory democracy” and the “protagonism of the people”.
“The United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the most popular party in Venezuela, which has the biggest militancy and the greatest organisation in the country, is integrated into the Great Patriotic Pole, modestly and humbly; integrated to work, support and organise with the idea of becoming part of this movement of movements,” said Cardenas.
Created in October last year, the GPP is a broad coalition of all the grassroots movements which support the re-election of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in this year’s presidential elections and the continuance of the country’s Bolivarian revolution.
Last week GPP “patriotic assemblies” took off throughout the country in a bid to consolidate the new organisation and to plan its activities for the coming year.
According to the movements’ spokespersons, the main focus of the patriotic assemblies will be to develop and discuss strategies to ensure the re-election of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in October, as well as to draft a “people’s agenda,” for the advancement of the revolution.
“It’s the first time that the people have had participation, and we’re not going to allow them to take that from us. We’re going for the victory of the president in October and then for the re-election of the governor in December,” said Yuletzy Martínez, spokesperson for the Women’s Peasant Front in Bolivar, where PSUV representative Francisco Rangel is currently governor.
President Hugo Chavez, who last week signalled that participatory democracy would be central to the progress of the revolution in the next few years, stated that the GPP should work within three key areas, including; creating collective leadership within the revolutionary process and taking the revolution into public and grassroots spaces.
“We need unity, we have to create a network of regional and local networks, from the bottom-up, a new hegemony and historic bloc,” said the Venezuelan president in November.
The patriotic assemblies are set to conclude in March.