Update: Venezuela’s Socialist Party wins super-majority.
In the 6 December 2020 National Assembly elections, the PSUV and the Great Patriotic Pole (GPP) won 69% of the vote, gaining control of 253 out of 277 seats in the incoming parliament. Turnout was low for Venezuela, at 30.5%, with participation hampered by crushing sanctions and economic crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and a boycott from the hard-right section of the opposition. Nevertheless, the vote provides the PSUV governing party with a super-majority, retaking control of the legislative power from the opposition coalition which triumphed in the last parliamentary elections of 2015. Combined opposition parties won 28% of the vote. The Popular Revolutionary Alternative, running on a communist party (PCV) ticket won 3% of the vote, taking just one seat in the new parliament. The election ended the stalemate between other branches of Venezuela’s government and the opposition controlled National Assembly which has been declared in contempt of the supreme court since 2016 due to allegations of voter fraud and the failure to re-run elections for three seats. The election also puts an end to Juan Guaido’s increasingly tenuous claim as interim president. This puppet of US imperialism had sworn himself in as president in January 2019 based on his assumption of the rotating position of the Head of the National Assembly in 2019 and led a string of failed coup attempts against PSUV president Nicolas Maduro. Under orders from the Trump administration, Guaido boycotted 2020’s parliamentary elections, his popularity having hit rock bottom. Nevertheless, the US, the European parliament and Britain continue to recognise him as ‘interim president’.
The elections were observed by the regionally esteemed Latin American Council of Electoral Experts (CEELA) who participated for two months, overseeing 13 audit processes in the run up to the poll. In addition, over 200 international observers from 17 countries witnessed the December’s vote, including former presidents Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Jose Luis Zapatero of Spain. The international observation committee report recognised the results of the election and stressed the efficiency of the extensive audit system. However, in step with US imperialism, the European parliament turned down Venezuela’s invitation to send election observers and pre-emptively rejected the results of the election before the first ballot was even cast.
Following suit, Britain’s foreign office declared ‘The UK considers the election to have been illegitimate and does not recognise the result. The UK recognises the National Assembly democratically elected in 2015 and recognises Juan Guaido as interim constitutional President of Venezuela.’ This is rank hypocrisy from the same office harbouring a secret ‘reconstruction of Venezuela’ unit, which worked to promote destabilisation, applauding sanctions and the continued withholding of over £820m worth of Venezuelan gold by the Bank of England.
The Guardian’s Tom Phillips gives credit to such posturing, reporting on the election as a ‘sham’ and ‘fraud’, quoting Guaido as the ‘leader’ of the opposition whilst failing to acknowledge the harsh criticism Guaido has drawn for his failed boycott strategy from opposition leaders including twice presidential candidate Henrique Capriles. The Guardian has once again proved itself a willing mouthpiece for British imperialism, preparing the ground for further sanctions and intervention against Venezuela.
We defend Venezuela’s sovereign electoral process and oppose foreign intervention. Hands off Venezuela! No sanctions! No coup! Give Venezuela back its gold!
Venezuela goes to the polls on 6 December 2020 to elect a new National Assembly, breaking the stalemate with the current opposition-controlled Assembly which has been in contempt of court since 2016 due to electoral irregularities. With the opposition hopelessly divided between the US backed hard-right, who are boycotting December’s vote, and the moderate opposition who are standing candidates, the election will be a litmus test of popular support for the United Socialist party (PSUV) government and President Nicolas Maduro.
The PSUV is the official electoral party of the Bolivarian revolution, formed in 2005 from the social movements which brought the late socialist President Hugo Chavez to power in 1998. For over 20 years the Bolivarian revolution has sought to control Venezuela’s oil revenues, channelling funds into crucial social programmes in healthcare, education, housing, food provision and more. This has been accompanied by an explosion in participatory democracy where predominantly working class communities were given funds and the legal right to address the needs of their barrios through communal councils and communes. However, this struggle for socialism has taken place within a capitalist framework where private companies have majority control of banking, industry, food distribution and media. This enemy within has launched a bitter war of attrition, with production stoppages, hoarding, speculation and economic sabotage. The US has led the attack from abroad, settling on an extreme regime of sanctions after repeatedly backing failed coup attempts.
To mobilise the working class, Maduro proposed 12 measures for consideration by the incoming parliament. These include a ‘family bonus’ to support those hit hardest by the blockade; a proposal to construct 200 communal cities, unifying the existing communes and communal councils; and a communal parliament law requiring consultation with the communes on all key projects and debates.
However, several progressive groups including the Communist Party (PCV), and majority factions of the Homeland Party (PPT) and Tupamaro party have split from the PSUV to form the Popular Revolutionary Alternative (APR), standing independent candidates. These parties previously participated on a joint ticket with the PSUV, but have criticised the party’s major concessions to the private sector, the so-called ‘revolutionary bourgeoisie’ who were enlisted to boost production and break the US blockade. The APR argues that this strategy has resulted in reversals for workers’ rights and land struggles, while the structures of working class democracy have been sidelined. The APR fiercely criticises corruption, mismanagement and attacks on worker organisation in state and private companies, denouncing the assassinations of land activists and evictions of campesino collectives. The significance of the split will become clearer at the polling stations, but reflects inevitable class tensions within the Bolivarian revolution at a time of extreme political and economic pressure.
These tensions bubbled over in October as Maduro announced a new ‘anti-blockade law’ passed by the National Constituent Assembly (ANC). The law declares all unilateral and coercive measures against Venezuela illegal, offering ‘new ways’ to work with international investors, promising to protect investments and assets. This sparked immediate dissent within the ranks of the Bolivarian revolution, with some denouncing the promotion of private participation on the basis that it violates the central principles of sovereignty and state management of natural resources enshrined in the 1999 constitution. Though some defend the measures as necessary to securing vital imports of food and fuel while attempting to restore public services and wages, #NoApruebo (I don’t approve) topped social media. There are concerns over measures that create an autonomous budget for investments with no legislative oversight, the removal of the National Assembly’s obligation to ratify international agreements, and confidentiality clauses which obscure contracts with private companies. Anxieties are not unfounded. Investigations into the state-run oil company PDVSA have uncovered huge corruption. An estimated $200m was embezzled in contracts for the Orinoco oil belt, alone whilst former oil minister Rafael Ramirez lives a luxurious life in exile, evading charges of fraud and money laundering. Similar scandals have been exposed in almost every major state company.
Fierce debate continues, prompting promises against PDVSA privatisation, opportunities for the economic participation of communal producers and confirmation that the 1999 constitution remains the over-riding legal framework for all contracts. However, this is not a just a battle of principles. The US navy patrols Venezuela’s coastline, recently seizing two Iranian tankers carrying diluent and gasoline on route to Venezuela. Nine tankers are thought to have loaded 6m barrels of crude in November with a further 18 expected to do so before January. This risky endeavour requires offshore loading and multiple transfers before the oil reaches its destination. Tankers turn off tracking devices and change their flags to evade US sanctions and threat of seizure. Secrecy is crucial to success.
A total blockade has decimated oil exports, cut off access to international finance, impeded food and medicine shipments, frozen bank accounts and led to the prosecution of companies that trade with Venezuela. Fuel, medicine and food shortages impact almost every sector while inflation has stripped the purchasing power of the working class. Venezuela’s assets abroad have been stolen, including over $1bn of gold withheld by the Bank of England. The US has seized CITGO, a subsidiary of the state oil company. This has drastically reduced storage capacity for Venezuelan crude and undermined domestic refining by blocking imports of US diluent. Oil production, Venezuela’s main source of foreign revenue, has fallen from 1.9m barrels per day in 2017 to less than 500,000 bpd. In November, the US terminated exemptions for foreign companies to swap diesel for oil. Imported diesel is central to agriculture, transport and local electricity generation and shortages have sparked protests in hard-hit working class areas which traditionally support the PSUV. Meanwhile the EU has extended sanctions on Venezuela and with the US and Britain will undoubtedly refuse to recognise December’s vote to justify continuing the blockade.
Clearly, open debate and discussion is needed. The Venezuelan masses have repeatedly defended their revolution against imperialist attacks and coup attempts, finding collective solutions to the blockade. However they demand a voice in decisions determining their future. As former vice president and leading PSUV member Elias Jaua made clear, what matters is ensuring the working class is a key player in discussions over how the Bolivarian revolution charts the dangerous path between pragmatism and socialist principle: ‘it is unfair to insinuate that President Nicolas Maduro is surrendering the revolution’s advances. The president… has to govern in suffocating conditions…But it is also unfair and a very low blow to describe the courageous voices which publicly expressed their doubts or disagreements as traitors or disloyal. What is needed is the opening of an authentic space of internal debate where the changes underway to the model built by Chavez can be explained and understood as an outcome of the circumstances’.
The bodies of participatory democracy central to the Chavista project must be built on and defended. The working class represents the interests of of the communal, campesino and labour movement against those of private companies. Our role in Britain has to be to oppose the imperialist blockade of Venezuela, and fight back against bourgeois media attempts to delegitimise Bolivarian democracy.
Sam McGill
