Now
is the time to overpower the rotten powers that be and build – from
below – a real democracy of equality, social justice and freedom in
Venezuela.
By the Editorial Collective of El Libertario in Venezuela
When
an illness becomes serious, when medical attention becomes a vehicle
for myopic, politically motivated decisions and when a patient becomes
drunk with power, it can only end this way. The strongman has died, and
in so doing, he has initiated a substantial shift in the Venezuelan
political landscape.
What used to be
the regime’s greatest strength has suddenly turned into its defining
weakness: it was all Chávez, and, without him, the only solution is to
fabricate an absolute commitment to his memory and his plans for
succession. The government’s true fragility can now be seen, a
government which tried to demonstrate its “popular, socialist” character
via a grotesque personality cult, a practice that has now been reduced
to the empty invocation of spirits.
The
deceased himself is to blame for this outcome as the secrecy around his
illness was propelled by the same motivations as the extreme
centralization of power around him, while the lack of ideological
coherence amongst his followers has left them scrapping for crumbs. The
high-level “rojo-rojito” [chavista red] bureaucrats and the upper
echelons of the military are best placed to benefit, as they negotiate
impunity for their various misdemeanors and corruptions.
For
the right-wing and social democratic opposition, the new situation
finds them unable to overcome their losses of the presidential elections
of October 7 and the regional ones of December 16, offering a “yuppy
populism” which promises voters that they will maintain and fine-tune
the clientelist tools of governmental power which were so useful to
Chavez.
This accommodation assumes
the belief that a fortuitous metastasis has brought them within reach of
the power that their greed, mistakes, laziness and incompetence had
kept them away from; power they will wield with similar stupidity and
greed as the Chavista bolibourgeoisie.
The
backdrop to this load of petty opportunism – from both the Gran Polo
Patriótico [the Chavista coalition] and the Mesa de Unidad Democrática
[the opposition coalition] – is Venezuela, a country that faces its own
problems: out of control inflation, rising unemployment and precarious
jobs, the devaluation of the currency, shocking personal insecurity,
crises in electricity and water provision, education and health systems
in decline, a housing shortage, obsolete – or incomplete – public works,
a demagogic approach which pays attention to only the most extreme
scarcities experienced by the most desperate people… a whole host of
other problems which are equally disastrous.
These
issues are not the central concern of the two gangs in competition for
Miraflores [the presidential palace] and the oil booty. Our collective
response must be to not relent to their blackmail: support at the ballot
box in exchange for “solutions” that either never materialize or are
ludicrously inadequate. Now is the time to overpower the rotten powers
that be and build – from below – a real democracy of equality, social
justice and freedom.
We must unleash
the generalized anger caused by our suffering, and convert it into
autonomous social struggles, self-managed and extensive. We must spell
out for the politicians in power that we don’t need them, neither as
intermediaries nor as gracious givers of what we ourselves can construct
– united and from the base – without any need for “clean hands” or “red
berets”.
EL LIBERTARIO Editorial Collective
ellibertario@nodo50.org - @pelibertario
www.nodo50.org/ellibertario - periodicoellibertario.blogspot.com
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