“Last” Days Of Maduro, And A Coup Is In The Offing In Venezuela: MSM Prognostications

By Farooque Chowdhury

13 March, 2016
Countercurrents.org

It would have been nice for the world system had Maduro, the president of Venezuela and the arch enemy of the system, failed. But Maduro has failed to fail. He is still holding high the standard of Bolivarian revolution. But the world system is in dire need of his failures. To facilitate much desired failure, the mainstream media (MSM) intensify propaganda of all sorts against Maduro. Two MSM headings are thus born: The last days of Maduro, and a coup is in the offing in Venezuela.

A look into recent MSM propaganda will find a lot of headings, news, analyses, profound scholarly knowledge of the “last days of Maduro”-variety. It’s a show of brain and motive of the MSM. But Venezuela-reality still makes MSM frustrated, and MSM stands as a fool. A look into Venezuela helps assess the reality.

A Venezuela charged with increasing tension emerged through the last National Assembly (NA) election. The election that brought rightist, big property-holding class representatives to overflow the country’s legislative chamber has done at least one act: prove imperialist propaganda is lie.

What was the propaganda? The world-masters’ ceaseless cacophony was: There’s no democracy in Venezuela; a fair election isn’t possible under the autocratic rule there. But now, the “dignified gentlemen” of MSM don’t say or feel ashamed to say: We lied about election process in Venezuela; the process is democratic as our friends have taken control of legislative assembly there; and they are trying to overturn the process initiated by the Venezuelan people; moreover, our friends have publicly announced plan to overthrow the president elected through a process that has proved democratic.

On this happening – an autocratic regime in the eyes of MSM turns democratic – Z C Dutka writes:

“Just hours before, the same people were howling via social media to the world about the totalitarian dictatorship imposed by Nicolas Maduro.

“And a curious dictator he is, to be sure. One that accepts a stunning electoral defeat with the words, ‘Our victory is peace, our victory is sovereignty […] today, democracy and the constitution have triumphed.’

“On the ground in Venezuela the 2014 violent guarimba protests, during which 43 people were killed and barricades guarded by armed protestors brought entire cities to a standstill, were at the front of people’s minds.

“Residents of central areas of Caracas reported an influx of food on the shelves.

“In his acceptance speech […], president Maduro said that rather than an opposition win, [the election] results marked ‘the victory of the counter revolution […] the state of need created by the politics of savage capitalism’. ‘[T]he opposition has votes because of the discontent in the country but does not have popular backing.’
“Of the 99+ opposition deputies who will join the National Assembly on January 5th, not one signed the statutory agreement drawn up in October by the country’s electoral authority CNE saying they would respect they election results.

“In April 2013, they refused to accept Maduro’s victory over presidential candidate Henrique Capriles despite the fact that 17 audits had been conducted by the CNE and upheld by international observers and organizations such as UNASUR (Union of South American Nations).” (“Miracles Do Happen: Venezuela Relabeled a Democracy in Wake of Opposition Win”, December 7, 2015)

Many of the time, a number of observers and analysts skip these facts from reality: The lies the mainstream (MS) scholars and media, both are propagandists, continue on propagating; the double standards that the MS maintains; the facts the MS hides. The MS’ tact includes: present half-truths, serve slanted and/or distorted facts and blurred pictures when it’s difficult to market a full lie; make cheap comments with a coating of serious idea; present an apparent appearance; and ignore twists within incidents, contradictions and limitations. It’s almost impossible, as for an instance, to find out in the MSM a single reference of the opposition deputies’ non-signing of the statutory agreement drawn up by the country’s electoral authority saying they would respect election results and the rightist opposition’s refusal to accept Maduro’s victory over presidential candidate Capriles despite the fact that 17 audits conducted by the CNE and upheld by international observers and organizations including UNASUR. [The same style happens also in other countries targeted for imperialist intervention.] It’s the shameless face of “dignified” MS in Venezuela, in other countries, in the imperialist world order. They never feel shy and embarrassed for any of their lies, for any presentation and propaganda of distorted facts by them. They “are” honest and brave indeed! Part of pro-people forces fall victim to this MS-game. The part doesn’t labor to dig facts and find twists and turns. The practice doesn’t help educate people. Lies by MS should be repeatedly exposed as MS continues repeating its lies. Exposure of lies, a bourgeois-property, is part of work for educating masses politically.

So, the “dignified gentlemen” from MS with their silence or numbness in the very part of their intellect show a lot of facts that once again expose their ugly class character:

[1] The quality of election, and, as a whole, democratic process.
[2] The character of MS and its media, the class interests these elements uphold.
[3] The type of, and the actors involved with the on-going political struggle.

Developments in Venezuela help understand the reality, which is charged with conflict of interests, a conflict that takes a long period to settle down. All societies are full with conflicts. The old, the advanced bourgeois societies aren’t free from conflicts. [Today’s US is one of the best examples.] So, conflicts, and sharpening of conflicts in Venezuela is not an issue for shame or evidence of failure. The sharpening of conflict is a show of desperate condition of vested, old, propertied interests that makes it aggressive. Developments in the society are making the interests desperate and aggressive.

Latest moves by the Venezuelan rightists with class-brothers in other lands and an empire as its master include:

[1] In a parliamentary session on March 3, 2016, legislators from the right-wing Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) [the horde is also called Roundtable of Democratic Unity] officially petitioned the Organization of American States (OAS) to intervene in Venezuela’s politics. The right-wingers asked the OAS secretary general to invoke No. 20 “democratic clause” of the OAS against Venezuela. Prior to the interventionist move from within the country the Venezuela Supreme Court blocked the interventionists’ attempts to remove thirteen judges of the Supreme Court (SC). Earlier, the SC detailed the limitations of the National Assembly’s powers according to the Bolivarian Constitution. The judges at the SC’s Constitutional Chamber confirmed that the legislative body has power only to exert political control on government and public administration bodies while the assembly has no other public powers including the judiciary, electoral and citizen’s powers. The Court also stated that the National Assembly appeared to be attempting to discredit both the executive and the judiciary for political gain, instead of fulfilling its role of responding to citizens’ concerns.

The Venezuela constitution provides provision to remove SC judges with a two-thirds majority of the legislative assembly subject their “serious offence” to be ascertained by ombudsman.

[2] Diosdado Cabello, former National Assembly president and legislator for the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), has alleged that SC judges were receiving death threats.

[3] Barack Obama, the US president, on March 3, 2016 renewed an executive order issued in March 2015 that declared Venezuela “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.” The order allows the US government to impose sanctions on Venezuela. The renewal of the decree is valid for one year and was revealed in a letter from Obama to congressional leaders. In the letter, the US president claims that alleged conditions that first prompted the order had “not improved.”

The executive order provoked a storm of controversy inside Venezuela and a backlash throughout Latin America. All 33 members of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States expressed their opposition to the US government’s move and called for it to be reversed. The United Nations of South America also strongly criticized Obama’s order. Millions of Venezuelans signed a petition asserting that the country was not a threat and called for the decree to be repealed. The US president eventually responded to the outcry, admitting that Venezuela “does not pose a threat” to the United States in an interview with EFE. All after that the latest move was taken.

[4] With a “pious” motive to open up state-owned key industries including oil, gold mining and energy production, production plants, land expropriated by the government and granted to communities, and services to private capital takeover the home-grown interventionists-controlled NA has recently approved “Law for the Activation and Strengthening of National Production”.

The law broadens private capital’s scope for intrusion into recovered state corporations also. The law provides provision for handing over state-subsidized dollars to importers of raw materials, retain all the profits by those importers and allow modification of prices of government regulated items including flour and cooking oil.
Reacting to the first discussion of the proposed law Maduro said: “They are attempting to take away land from the campesinos, from the indigenous… It’s absolutely illegal, immoral and unconstitutional,” He called on the people to rebel against the legislation.

[5] The reactionary force dominated NA approved the Amnesty and National Reconciliation Law in first discussion on February 16. This law, if it gets approval, could set free from prisons/indemnify dozens of criminals convicted for acts of arson, damage to property, transport and electric systems and public services, destruction of roads, violence, incitement to hate; and could also benefit persons jailed for corruption and embezzlement, and oil bureaucrats fired for their role in the 2002 oil lockout aimed at toppling the Chavez government. These criminals set up barricades, engaged with acts of arson and violence that killed 43, majority of them were passersby and security personnel, in February 2014. There was huge money for food, drink, transport, walky-talkies and weapons for carrying out these acts of terrorism. “Entire communities were walled in, their residents blocked from accessing food, transport, gas and even necessary medical services. Buildings were set alight with people inside, hundreds were injured.” (Rachael Boothroyd Rojas, “From Violent Barricades in 2014 to Official Right-Wing: Venezuela’s Opposition”, Telesur English, February 12, 2016) It was one of the most prolonged periods of violent, armed assault, infamously known as guarimbas, on the elected government, and broadly the citizenry. It was an organized operation. In one incident, 94 children got trapped in a nursery as the building was set on fire by petrol-bomb. A participant in the violent acts said: “There were organized groups from within the universities, which were divided into subgroups. People in charge of the distribution of information, photos, and publishing all that, people in charge of planning the routes, people in charge of security… there was organization amidst the chaos…. There was a core violent group, but they weren’t students”. (ibid.) Collaborators from private homes to small businesses facilitated the terrorist acts with a network of internet connections, food, drink, places to hold meetings or to hide from police. Many of the criminals were paid approximately 600 bolivars-a-day to take part. Many of these elements came from the country’s well-seasoned and highly organized right-wing student movement. There were highly violent groups who received funding and military training. (ibid.) [Do these appear known from experience in some other countries? Has MSM reported these facts? What about the dignified part of MSM that regularly poses as sentinels of democracy but extend support to conspirators in the name of democracy at the hour of need? Shall the bourgeois-imperialist conscience and jurisprudence compare the acts by their paid thugs in Venezuela with the acts of recent seizure of a US federal property in Oregon by a band and the method authority followed to deal with the incident? Or shall they recall the forceful method and deceitful laws used to dismantle non-violent Occupy Movement in cities across the US?]

About 40 human rights organizations including the Organization for the Victims of the Guarimbas, the Comite de Victimas de la Guarimba y el Golpe, Association of the Victims of the Coup d’Etat have denounced the proposed legislation as a violation of the country’s constitution, and have rejected the plan for the amnesty law.

[6] The NA plans to pass a law privatizing social housing so that houses built for the poor could be pulled into home speculation market.

[7] Fedecameras, the country’s far-right largest chamber of commerce, plans to petition the right wing dominated NA to eliminate price regulations so that price regulations are slashed down, modify the Organic Work and Workers’ Law developed under Chavez, eliminate prohibitions against outsourcing and arbitrary firings, revoke exchange control law to enable free flight of capital out of the country. Fedeagro, the agro-business lobby, has called for the derogation of a number of laws including the Land Law, the Law of Food Sovereignty, and the Anti-Transgenic and Anti-Patent Seed Law. These laws guarantee people their rights to land, national food sovereignty, biogenetic diversity.

Other steps by the rightists are also there in the country with the world’s largest petroleum resources, second-largest gold reserves and deposits of diamonds, iron and aluminium. They have vowed to overthrow Maduro by 2016. The right-wing MUD unveiled on March 8, 2016 its plan for ousting Maduro from power with four components that include a constitutional amendment reducing the term of the president from six to four years, a recall referendum, street mobilizations, and constituent process to rewrite the constitution. A Reuters report on March 12, 2016 said: Venezuela’s opposition launched a new protest campaign on March 12, 2016 to oust Maduro, but support was thin.

So, a near-mid-March MSM heading from the US said: A coup is in the offing in Venezuela, military will throw away Maduro.

A counter-revolutionary onslaught has begun in Venezuela. The reactionary forces are making charges on two fronts: on the political front, and on the economic front. People’s gains, political and economic, are targeted by the property-holding rightists. On the one hand, designs are being unfolded to snatch away gains the people in Venezuela have made so far; and on the other, stage is being set for increasing imperialist intervention. Preparations/ground work for imperialist intervention, experiences from other countries including Iraq, Libya and Syria show, may take a long time. Examples of contrary to this are also there in the hemisphere.
Sabotage in economy by the property holding reactionary forces has deteriorated the situation as that created scarcity of basic consumer goods while earning from oil found a 97% drop and inflation rising to 140% in 2015. (Rachael Boothroyd Rojas, “Venezuela’s Maduro Announces String of Emergency Economic Measures”, February 18, 2016) Speculation by private capital has made many commodities for daily life inaccessible to commoners. There were problems in economic policies, and with corruption and inefficiency. In mid-February, 55 state food employees were arrested. They have been accused of hoarding state subsidized goods and reselling those on the black market in a speculative practice known as bachaqueo. Huge quantity of hoarded food items including corn flour, sugar, pasta and margarine in a single supermarket in Caracas was also recovered. In early-February, three top officials of state food corporations were arrested on charges of embezzling millions of bolivars as they were illegally selling subsidized food products for the poor families to private sector restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets. Millions of bolivars were found in the residences and offices of the accused. The anti-corruption drive also detained 40 public servants while 12 were absconding. Part of government officials are linked to smuggling and black market of food products and pharmaceuticals. Last October found a number of armed forces officials and a high health department official practicing diversion of medical items from state warehouse to black market.

Most important of all ills: A loosening of connection to the Bolivarian revolutionary spirit, to people – a show of ideological rupture.

Reactionaries will now attempt, as Lucas Koerner writes, to roll back gains of the people in Venezuela, take away the space the people have created there, revoke critical revolutionary legislations including the Organic Law of Communes, repeal international treaties including the ALBA-TP and PetroCaribe, reorganize the Supreme Court, impeach Maduro. (“Facing Opposition Onslaught, Chavismo Must Return to Roots”, December 9, 2015)

A number of analyses have evaluated the NA election result as “Chavismo’s historic defeat”. The defeat, if that comes down on the earth, is still far away. The election result is a debacle for Chavismo; and the embarrassing failure was natural consequence of the quality of work: inefficiency, indecision, corruption, and failure to reach, mobilize and lead the people. [There’s a question: Why the failure?/What’s the root of the failure?] Historical characteristic is also there. It would have been unnatural had the people responded in a different way. Rather, a punishment handed over by the people sounds natural.

However, all is not gone. Allies and social forces are getting mobilized. Steps are being initiated. Maduro has recently announced a series of economic initiatives in response to the economic crisis that include increase in national minimum wage, change in multi-tiered exchange rate, increase in domestic price of gasoline, implementation of a new tax system, and expansion of community control over food distribution. Investments in “missions” – public services – will continue. Prior to the announcement of economic measures the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) approved a state of economic emergency decree that the NA tried to block. The TSJ ruling allows Maduro to take vital measures in the area of economy. Maduro plans to turn ministries into “true” institutions of “people’s power”, and to put local communities organized into communal councils in charge of administering the state supermarket chain, Asbastos Bicentenario. Maduro’s recent announcement of creation of the National Productive Corporation is significant. It’s a part of socialist enterprise system. Aimed to coordinate efforts of state, communal and mixed firms the new initiative will unify more than a thousand public enterprises in “single vision of planning, management, productivity, and maximum efficiency”. More than 50 supermarkets across 13 states and the capital city were recently targeted in an anti-speculation operation.

People are taking initiative in many forms as Chavismo is trying to get reorganized in workplaces and communities, and in streets. People in the country are trying to exercise their rights.

The following incidents tell a small part of those efforts:

[1] In near-mid-February, Rachael Boothroyd Rojas’ report “Collectives Hijack Polar Company Trucks in Caracas, Protest Hoarding” said, protesting working people in the western part of Caracas hijacked trucks of Polar, the country’s number one private food chain selling food products from beer to corn flour. The working people demanded: Polar cease hoarding essential goods. “We communities in Catia decided to come out onto the streets in protest, one because there is not food to be got, and two, against the Polar business,” said one protestor. “In Catia, more than 100 trucks with beer and fizzy drinks enter on a daily basis… but no trucks with food! That’s why we have taken a decision to put pressure on Polar, those carrying out destabilization and smuggling,” said another Catia resident, who demanded that food be handed over to communities for direct distribution. “We know that they have warehouses full of food, but here in the barrio they’re selling beer,” said another resident. Polar-owner millionaire businessman Lorenzo Mendoza is consistently embroiled in scandal, and is accused of hoarding food, misappropriating state-subsidized dollars for imports and even conspiring with rightwing politicians to oust the national elected government.

[2] “Building homes is building politics”, is one of the slogans of the Pioneers Movement, a radical house-building collective in the country. The movement takes direct action to solve housing crisis. It has taken over about 40 unused sites for community-led construction in Caracas, and many sites across the country. Hundreds of families collectively construct blocks of community owned flats. In some cases, they occupy land sites of private big land-owners for months. In cases, government intervenes to grant the movement both land and resources. The collective is part of a wider “Settler’s Movement”. The movement considers that the act of building houses as a community is a fundamental pillar of people’s power, of constructing cohesive communities.

In the later part of January, the Pioneers Movement led a rally of social movements in Caracas to protest rightist plan to pass a law to privatize social housing. Slogans in the march included “Land is a right, not merchandise”, “Build and organize the popular movement”, “Pioneers Camp: Against privatization, for collective, self-managed property”, “Pueblo en rebellion, por mas autogestion – People in rebellion, More self-management”. The protesters said the planned law was a direct attempt to eliminate the hard fought right to public housing, and its motive is to help land speculators and bankers. Social movements have pledged to continue resisting the proposed legislation in the streets.

It should be mentioned that in cooperation with communities the Bolivarian government has built more than 1 million homes for the poorest families. Now the rightists plan to sale out these houses by privatizing these houses by enacting a law titled Law for the Award of Property Deeds to the Beneficiaries of the Venezuelan Great Housing Mission.

These are parts of many of the streams flowing within the society, but missed by many MS scholars, and the blindness makes them happy.

A new juncture in the political life in Venezuela has emerged. There’s need of renewed political fight, and requirement of reinvigorating, deepening and widening organizations built up so far. Now, there’s urgent and immediate need to initiate a new phase in political struggle, in struggle to keep hold on political power to secure gains the people have made.

The rightists are trying to deceive the people. “In 2013, opposition presidential candidate Henrique Capriles sought to market himself as the rightful heir to the late Hugo Chavez”. (Lucas Koerner, “Facing Opposition Onslaught, Chavismo Must Return to Roots”, December 9, 2015) Yes, that was the tact the diehard liars propagated. However, the rightists’ play with words and deceptive tact will get exposed the moment they fully unfold their neoliberal program, and a contradiction shall sharpen as “[p]olls have long shown that the vast majority of the Venezuelan people support the radical social democratic initiatives of the Bolivarian Revolution … Likewise, over two-thirds of the population oppose neoliberal policies, such as the privatization of the state oil company PDVSA or of the state electric company CORPOLEC.” (ibid.)

New form of organization with new possibilities for wider and sharper political struggle is getting generated. As for example, the recently formed National Communal Parliament (NCP) carries the possibility of waging a new political fight between organs of power, and safeguarding the Laws of Popular Power from right wingers’ plan to demolish the laws. In the NCP, people can play role as the main decision maker while the NA has been usurped by the reactionaries. There are laws including the Law of the Communal Councils, the Law of Popular Power, the Law of the Communes, which widen scope for common people’s participation in the democracy, and which are to be defended. Defending the laws is a political fight, and the fight, if successfully and actively organized, will sharpen contradiction between the people and the bourgeoisie in Venezuela, expose the reactionaries planning to rob people, and alienate the propertied classes from the people. Defending the NCP by mobilizing community based organizations with a surge from grassroots can be a major struggle as the NA may try encroaching people’s spaces in economy and politics. In the NCP, community based organizations – one of the advancements the Bolivarian revolution has made – can initiate debates on issues of people’s political power and its organs, people’s democratic rights versus property holders’ rights, old and people’s decision making process, people’s property versus bourgeois property, and raise demands on existing branches of the old state machine. The demands may be on safeguarding people’s power, gains and interests, on allocation of resources, and curtailment of rights of forces hatching plan to move backward. It can also raise the issue of imperialist intervention, and call upon the NA to denounce the intervention. [History of the bourgeois parliaments in a number of advanced bourgeois republics provides a good lesson on the method and style the class follows in imposing its dictatorship. Those included use of sheer force, blatant imposition of its political will to safeguard its interests. Those were so forceful, brutal and explicit that they try not to mention those now-a-days while they distribute sermons on democracy.]

The regional political scene bears signs of rightist offensive. The world raw material markets are now standing against pro-people political forces. Desperate imperialism is actively moving forward to regain its lost grip in its so-called backyard – Latin America. Pro-people developments in the region are facing problems internally and externally. There are problems and debates related to class alliance and alignments, pro-people politics and organization, and issues of compromise and accommodation, and extent and moment of these. Negative signs, no doubt, are many.

But, there are the peoples in countries in the region, their experiences with neoliberalism, plunder, death squads, military dictatorships and imperialist dictation and intervention, their experiences with struggles they have waged and are waging. And, there are weak points the world imperialism is facing. At moments, it’s getting bound by its limitations.

The situation faced by the workers-peasants-soldiers in Russian in 1917 was much harsh and hard, hostile and difficult than in today’s Venezuela in many terms. The reality the proletariat in Russia faced during its seizure of political power was full with more difficulties: an imperialist war, advance of enemy forces, sabotages and assassinations, famine, typhus, lack of food grains-potato-coal in winter days, disorganized railway communication, hoarding of food grains, war tired soldiers, betrayals by tsarist generals, lack of arms and ammunition, cold hospitals and child homes, locked bank vaults, imperialist encirclement, and many such “gifts” from the tsarist-bourgeois forces. “Unavoidable catastrophe” Lenin described, “is threatening Russia. The railways are incredibly disorganized and the disorganization is progressing. The railways will come to a standstill. The delivery of raw material and coal to the factories will cease. The delivery of grain will cease. The capitalists are deliberately and unremittingly sabotaging (damaging, stopping, disrupting, hampering) production hoping that an unparalleled catastrophe will mean […] the restoration of the unlimited power of the bourgeoisie and the landowners.” (“The impending catastrophe and how to combat it”, September 10-14, 1917)
Telegrams from and to Lenin unearth a part of those days. Following is an example:

“[P]rotect the coal […] protect the salt […]” (to J V Stalin, February 18, 1920)

In this situation, call for organization was made many times. The following is one of those:

“What we need is tens of thousands of picked, politically advanced workers, loyal to the cause of socialism, incapable of succumbing to bribery and the temptations of pilfering, and capable of creating an iron force against kulaks, profiteers, racketeers, bribe-takers and disorganizers.

“The strength of the workers and their salvation lie in organization. Everybody knows that. Today what we need is a special kind of organization of the workers …” (“Draft of a telegram to the Petrograd workers, May 21, 1918”) The special kind of organization was capable of implementing and imposing will of the working people.
The working people in Russia surmounted all difficulties and odds, faced and foiled all conspiracies in 1917.

And, there was ceaseless political fight going-on. The proletariat there also carried forward the political fight. This makes Lenin relevant; this makes lessons from Lenin relevant. It’s politics, it’s organization, it’s discipline, it’s political fight and mobilization.

In the case of Venezuela, international support and solidarity is there. The recent statement from the Non-Aligned Movement of 120 countries expressed support for Venezuela and criticized Obama for renewing the sanctions.

People are also getting mobilized. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans marched the streets of Caracas and other major cities across the country to express solidarity with Maduro and to reject Obama’s renewal of the interventionist decree. The popular marches began on March 12, 2016, and will continue up to April 14 covering all communes and communal councils.

Political fight is not only against the rightists; it should also be against corruption, nepotism, mismanagement, indiscipline, vacillation. Political fight should be waged for people’s control over resources and management. It’s political fight in economic front. It’s forcefully furthering the journey towards the higher goal. Maduro recently said: “they will not get rid of me”. It’s possible when links with the people are live, when people take initiatives going beyond old system and set up, when political leadership fires up people’s political struggle in economic and political fronts.

The people in Latin America, in Venezuela bear hope. They still occupy the space they have created. There’s possibility of initiating a new political fight for a qualitatively new political space.

Farooque Chowdhury is freelancer from Dhaka.