Opción Obrera on the parliamentary elections in Venezuela
- The parliamentary elections scheduled for December 6, 2020, are an exciting topic, evidenced by the statements and agreements on them, by Trump, Pompeo, the EU, UK, countries as distant and dissimilar as the so-called International Contact Group where South Korea, Israel, Canada, and the Lima Group are. Venezuelans should be satisfied with such devotion towards us. There seems to be a dilemma: legitimate participation (recognizing the government) and those who do not participate in order not to endorse it, also denounce that they are fraudulent, everything is absurd. The anti-fraud right is a coup plotter and at the same time, the Maduro government invites them to participate which would be like absolving them of all guilt. You have to go vote. The vote goes with a position before the insurmountable contradictions to satisfy the basic necessities for life: Food, education, work, comprehensive health, all national, regional, and community services. All the candidates ignore the deprivation of the masses, gas or firewood, electricity, how often? Water, but not potable, when it arrives, telephony and internet almost non-existent, often due to theft of cables, dollarized and rationed gasoline, without access to cash, with scarce, expensive transport service, all this together with the almost zero salary, and unemployment. None of this is on any electoral list programs. The vote must be a protest vote, or if it were the case of a candidate, who is neither the government nor the right-wing opposition, with a position regarding some of the problems mentioned and their solution through struggles, local or circumstantial support should be given to them. Abstention favors the boycott of national and international rights. A plan for the recovery of services must be debated with the workers and the communities of the entire country with periodic accountability, and revocability of the incompetent. We affirm the Nationalization of Banking and Foreign Trade, no to the privatization of PDVSA [the state-owned oil company] or the strategic companies, Workers' Control over the production and administration of all of the above. No to external debt payment. Retribution to be applied to the foreign companies in the country, the same treatment that their respective governments make against Venezuela. Minimum wage equal to the basic food basket and a sliding scale of wages. For a Workers' Government.
- The “strength” of the government lies in the incompetence of the right to address the material conditions of the country and offer an alternative. Venezuela had for many years a very high GDP, but based exclusively on income from the sale of oil. Today it suffers one of the most resounding capitalist collapses in the world in this century and it still continues to drift, but it has resources to promote the development of the country and of strategic interest to the world. What is their proposal? Tighten our belts more to be able to recover. The government comes from a populist thread, but now it is turning a somersault as a state policy, to the right, and it is not going to surrender before the opposition, which lost the government 22 years ago. Now there is a union bureaucracy that tries to channel the discontent of the workers towards the right-wing opposition. Oil is necessary for production, come recession, or war. Exxon-Mobil came out at the end of August, as a shareholder of the Dow Jones industrial, after more than 90 years of being among the first of that stock index. Because of its reserves, its location, its ease of production, its assets, Venezuela is coveted, despite its economic decomposition. Faced with the elections, the workers have their own interests, but they cannot isolate themselves from this event, at the risk of making their life miserable.
- In the US elections, both sides affirm their commitment against Venezuela. The Maduro government is defined as a police state, a dictatorship. Without a doubt, it is a government with very effective and selective repression, it is Bonapartist, with very powerful arbitrary actions. Colombia is living with the paramilitary gangs associated with the production and trafficking of drugs. Mexico is relevant in the organization and arming of drug cartels gangs. Russia is under the absolute control of Putin and the US governments are the cradle of the domination and abuse of the police, now faced by the masses in a pre-revolutionary action in this last mentioned country. Venezuela is subjected to interventions, military operations, attacks, economic sanctions, theft of assets by the most powerful nations in the world. it is not only because of the country's resources, especially oil, it is also for political reasons. and behind this are moves against the workers, who ended the traditional union mafias. The government is a wall for containing the mobilizations of the workers, a wall that we workers have to tear down. We also have to prevent others from coming to replace that wall with another.
- The outcome of the situation in Venezuela will affect all of Latin America, which can become a revolutionary situation because of the magnitude of capitalist bankruptcy in Venezuela. The right, despite such disastrous conditions of government, has not been able to absorb popular discontent. There are no independent mass mobilizations of the workers and the masses. The nationalist program of Chavismo has disarmed the entire left and is now itself exhausted. There lies the impasse for the workers. Venezuela is a central target of imperialism and all its allies. The comrades who intend to build the Fourth International, within the convulsive Latin American context have to take a position on the situation there, historically and concretely, with the disappointment in the nationalist rhetoric of Chavismo that politicized the masses, with a militant populism disguised as socialism. The central task of the moment for Opción Obrera is to build a nucleus that encourages and participates in struggles, even isolated and spontaneous and links them to the conscious task to get out of the capitalist structural crisis only with a workers' government. This can only prove durable within the framework of the United Socialist States of Latin America.
