By Socialism and Freedom Party – Section of the UWI-FI in Venezuela
On Friday, January 10, Nicolás Maduro was proclaimed president for a third 6-year term, in the context of a militarized country. The police, the Bolivarian National Guard and military counterintelligence troops (DGCIM) took over the capital and the main cities of the country, as well as the headquarters of all State institutions.
In the days prior to Maduro’s inauguration, a new repressive crackdown took place, resulting in the arrest of some 49 people, among them political leaders, human rights activists, social leaders and journalists.
Maduro takes office after having executed a scandalous fraud in the July 28 presidential elections, and brutally repressed popular demonstrations that took place between July 29 and 30, in reaction to what most considered as a circumvention of the popular will. This indiscriminate repression was extended during the following days and weeks resulting in more than 2,000 people arrested, most of them from popular barrios.
The fraud, the repression after July 28 and the presidential proclamation carried out last Friday, are new twists and turns of a regime that we have characterized as a dictatorship since 2016, after Maduro de facto dissolved the National Assembly that had an opposition majority and militarily intervened the Attorney General’s Office, applying a violent repression to the popular protests that took place between April and June 2017.
For its part, the bosses’ and pro-imperialist right wing, headed by María Corina Machado and Edmundo González Urrutia, devoted itself during the last months to generate false expectations in view of January 10. As we had already warned, the supposed transition that María Corina Machado was talking about did not take place, nor did Edmundo González come to the country to take office.
From the Socialism and Freedom Party (Partido Socialismo y Libertad) we say that the changes that the working people yearn for will not be the product of faith, nor of magic formulas, they will not come from some kind of foreign interference or by the actions of a nebulous “international community”. To defeat the government and its capitalist austerity, and to recover democratic liberties, we cannot rely on the bourgeois opposition parties, nor on María Corina Machado and Edmundo González, much less on a capitalist class willing to sell itself to the highest bidder for the sake of its businesses.
Last January 10, with the proclamation of Maduro, an illegitimate government without popular support was ratified, which will continue to apply a severe capitalist austerity program in collusion with the business sector, tightening its ties and agreements with Fedecámaras and Conindustria. Maduro’s regime is an expression of the failure of Chavismo as a political project that initially generated great popular expectations. Chavismo failed with the reformist double discourse of governing with the employers’ sectors and mixed enterprises without leaving the framework of capitalism, accompanied by a pseudo-popular and “leftist” discourse.
In this sense we say that the situation of the working class and popular sectors can only change with struggle. Only the workers and popular mobilization will be able to defeat the dictatorship and recover democratic freedoms.
We propose an alternative program to the government-imposed capitalist austerity. It’s urgent to organize ourselves, taking the necessary precautions, in the communities, factories, offices, health and educational centers to mobilize for the freedom of the political prisoners, in defense of democratic liberties, and to impose a Working class and Popular Emergency Plan, financed through a Social and Economic Fund whose resources should come from the big business, bankers and transnationals; that contemplates 100% state oil without transnationals or joint ventures, managed by its workers, professionals and technicians; taxes on the big national and transnational capitalists; non-payment of the foreign debt; suspension of police and military expenses; repatriation of resources from abroad; confiscation of assets of corrupt individuals.
With all these resources establish salaries and pensions amounting to the basic food basket, indexed monthly to inflation. No more salary bonuses! An infrastructure plan to recover universities, schools, hospitals and clinics, providing decent and productive jobs; shelters and protection for all those women who dare to denounce machista violence. An investment plan in the oil industry and basic enterprises so they can provide gasoline, gas and electricity! All this in the perspective of fighting for a government of the working class, for true socialism with workers’ and popular democracy.
January 11, 2025
Translated from the original Spanish by Venezuelanvoices.org
