29th July 2024. After a six-hour delay, Elvis Amoroso, president of the electoral authority, declared Maduro the winner with 51.21 per cent of the votes against Gonzalez Urrutia’s 44.2 per cent.
Almost nobody, except for those close to the Maduro government, believes in these results nor trusts the veracity of the process. Millions of people went massively to vote with the mistaken hope that their will would be respected and thus put an end to Maduro’s dictatorial and starving regime.
The fraud was coming, although the bosses’ opposition, led by Maria Corina Machado, insisted that they could defeat the government at the election, discarding the indispensable popular mobilisation. Despite the fact that this is not the first time that fraud has occurred in Venezuela.
This year, Maduro’s government has been deepening restrictions to democratic freedoms and abusively using state resources in its favour. Political leaders were disqualified and candidates were challenged. Over 70 activists and opposition party leaders were arrested during the campaign. Venezuelan emigrants were also limited from voting.
Maduro’s government closed any possibility for the independent left and opposition to his government of fake socialism, to present a candidacy that would reflect the interests of the working people.
Socialism and Freedom Party (PSL), a member of the International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI), defends democratic freedoms, and vindicates the political and electoral rights of the working people. The PSL, PPT/APR, Marea Socialista (Socialist Wave), and LTS united to denounce the government fraud, and to defend working class political independence.
The PSL and the IWU-FI spoke out against the orchestrated fraud and supported the right to respect the vote of millions. We do not support nor have any coincidence with the bosses and right-wing opposition electoral alliance headed by Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia and Maria Corina Machado.
Most of the Venezuelan people are fed up with this government that applies a harsh capitalist austerity, with salaries below 4 dollars and with public services, health, and education destroyed. In the absence of any other option, the candidacy of the liberal right of Gonzalez Urrutia channelled the punishment vote. This bosses’ alliance brings together the remnants of the old bosses’, oligarchic and pro-American politics of Venezuela, which always governed against the workers. The same ones that gave rise to the historic popular insurrection known as the Caracazo in 1989, against the austerity package of then President Carlos Andres Perez.
The social crisis of the 1990s and the disrepute of the people with the old pro-imperialist leadership and the surrender of oil and other wealth of the country, facilitated the emergence of the new political phenomenon of Hugo Chavez, who came to power in 1998 with a popular, anti-imperialist discourse and even proclaimed (2005) that a “Socialism of the XXI century” was being built. This opened enormous expectations and support in Venezuela and throughout Latin America. But this was a deception. Our Trotskyist left current, headed in Venezuela by the workers’ leaders Orlando Chirino and Jose Bodas, denounced from the first moment that Chavez and then Maduro, were not building any socialism, their project under an anti-imperialist discourse had been to pact with the oil transnationals through joint ventures with the state-owned PDVSA.
This was also done with big proprietors such as Cisneros and others, while encouraging the emergence of companies that did business with the State or linked to the Armed Forces, generating a new sector that became known as “Bolivarian bourgeoisie”, applying an anti-worker policy of low wages and attacks on workers’ and independent leftist organisations. Nothing could be further from authentic socialism and the true left. Maduro took office after Chavez’ death in 2013 to continue and deepen this policy. As he was losing popular support because of the growing poverty and the harsh austerity he was applying, he was intensifying repression.
In this sense, it is important to emphasise that in Venezuela, socialism did not fail, as the right wing proclaims; Chavismo failed. It is another failure of the governments of class conciliation and liars, of “double talk”, that lie to the popular sectors while agreeing with the bosses and the transnationals against their people. Governments that have already failed, such as Peronism in Argentina, Lula-PT in Brazil or Syriza in Greece. The PSL and the IWU-FI fight to achieve governments of the workers that begin the road of true socialism with workers’ and popular democracy.
Maduro’s government speaks of anti-imperialism, poses as leftist and makes speeches against Milei’s bigotry, but it is still a bourgeois dictatorship that starves and represses the working people. The peoples of the world should not be confused: the scandalous electoral fraud is part of that policy. Only with mobilisation will it be possible to defeat the Maduro government and the fraud. The bosses’ opposition of Gonzalez Urrutia-María Corina Machado in their first statements has not called for mobilisation against the fraud, reiterating their vacillating policy focused on negotiations. Already in Caracas and other cities some spontaneous “cacerolazos” (banging of pots and pans to express repudiation) have taken place. We call on the people to take to the streets to defeat the fraud and the Maduro government. On the road to the fundamental changes that the working people of Venezuela need.
International Workers’ Unity-Fourth International (IWU-FI)
29th July 2024
