After the presidential elections in Venezuela

Prises de position - Prese di posizione - Toma de posición - Statements - Prohlášení - Заявления

At the end of election day on Sunday July 28, President Maduro was officially declared the winner by the CNE (National Electoral Commission), with over 50% of votes cast. However, this proclamation was immediately contested on the grounds of numerous irregularities, including the fact that only 80% of the votes had been counted, according to the CNE itself, which cited computer hacking; the minutes of the vote were not published (they still haven't been to this day), and so on. In the absence of these counts, observers from the Carter Center, who were there to check the regularity of the ballot, left the country after declaring that the election could not be declared “democratic”.

The right-wing and far-right opposition claimed that their candidate had in fact won the elections with over 70% of the vote! Various Latin American countries have denounced electoral fraud: Argentina, Peru, Chile, etc., in all nearly 60 countries have contested the results, Brazilian President Lula and his American counterpart Biden have issued a joint communiqué - a rather exceptional event - to demand the publication of complete polling station data, etc. In addition, Russia and China, as well as Nicaragua and Bolivia, recognized the election results.

The day after the official results were announced, spontaneous demonstrations and casserolades broke out in the proletarian areas of metropolitan Caracas, in various districts of Petare, such as La Dolorita, San Blas and other traditionally pro-Chavista areas; the demonstrators then converged on the center of the capital, where clashes with the police took place. Demonstrations also took place in other cities across the country. The following day, the right-wing opposition called for demonstrations against Maduro's declaration of victory.
The repression was brutal, with hundreds of arrests and around twenty deaths, while the authorities cried “fascist coup” and took measures against the opposition...

Left-wing and “extreme” left-wing organizations have once again demonstrated their democratic cretinism. “La otra campaña”, a grouping of ‘left-wing chavists’, Trotskyists and reformists of all stripes, issued a communiqué on July 29 moaning about threats to ‘the impartiality of institutions’ that would undermine ‘the right we have as a people to self-determination, to decide our collective future, in democracy’ and calling on the security forces to ‘strictly respect human rights standards’ and on political leaders to ‘exercise their rights responsibly and without resorting to violence’. The communiqué concludes by saying that “no matter who governs, rights must be respected” (1). In other words, what matters is that the democratic form and methods of bourgeois domination be respected! For proletarians, what matters is that the bourgeoisie, right or left, ceases to govern, not that it respects the “rights” of the exploited...

“Marea Socialista”, part of a group that called for a blank vote, proclaimed in its statement of 30/7 that “the people have the constitutional right to know how their votes have been treated and to have them respected” (2).

We're not interested in the people's constitutional right to enforce the electoral farce: what interests us is that the proletariat realizes that elections, with or without fraud, are a sham, and Constitutions are rags designed to legitimize the power of the ruling class, respected only insofar as it suits the bourgeoisie: the defense of proletarian class interests will never be achieved through elections and within a constitutional framework, but outside and against the bourgeois order, its state and its political system, whether more or less democratic.

The main reason for the demonstrations in proletarian districts is the dramatic situation of the proletarian masses after years of anti-worker attacks. For years, the government has acted in favor of employers' interests, calling into question many of the social protection measures granted at a time of economic growth, abolishing national collective agreements, severely curtailing the right to strike, and allowing bosses to unilaterally alter working conditions and dismiss workers at will. Rampant inflation has reduced social benefits and wages to poverty levels. According to the IMF, unemployment is set to rise from 6.7% in 2014 to 56% in 2024. This has led to the emigration of millions of people in search of survival outside the country, while repressive measures against workers guilty of fighting to defend their interests have been a further factor in the paralysis of the working class.

In this seemingly hopeless situation, it's understandable that some proletarians believed that the arrival of the right-wing opposition in government could be a lesser evil, by putting an end to the Maduro government and its anti-worker policies. But this is nothing but a mirage: the right-wing opposition, representing the most reactionary traditional bourgeois sectors, is just as anti-proletarian as Maduro and his friends: its model is Argentina's President Milei and his ultra-liberal policies. All they would be doing is fundamentally continuing the current policy and making it even worse.

Proletarians and the poor masses will have to take the path of class struggle against the capitalists, their politicians and their henchmen of all kinds, if they are to resist before they have the strength to put an end to a system that lives on misery, injustice and exploitation. It won't be easy, but there's no alternative: proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains, and a world to win!

(1) https://surgentes.org.ve/2024/07/29/la-otra-campana-demanda-transparencia-como-garantia-de-los-derechos -politicos/ This is also the slogan of the Communist Party of Venezuela.

(2) https://lis-isl.org/2024/07/30/venezuela-ante-los-muy-dudosos-resultados-electorales-y-la-movilizacion- popular- por-el-respeto-de-los-votos-reales/ .

In France, several left-wing parties, like the Socialist Party, the Ecologistes, the Trotskyst Besancenot's NPA…, have signed a similar call “for exit from the top (sic!)”, in favor of a “public and pluralist citizen audit (...) so that the will expressed at the ballot box can prevail” (amen! ) and calling for “the constitution of a network of internationalist solidarity with the Venezuelan people, in support of their democratic aspirations and emancipation struggles”. http://www.gds-ds.org/solidarite-avec-les-revendications-democratiques-du-peuple-venezuelien/ No question of solidarity with the Venezuelan proletariat and support for its class struggles: that would be anti-democratic...

Il comunista - le prolétaire - el proletario - proletarian - programme communiste - el programa comunista - Communist Program