Maduro´s gangster capitalist regime
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Just checked what the orthodox Trotskyists are saying about the situation in Venezuela. According to the below, it is what they used to say about the USSR under Stalin and his successors — that a self-serving bureaucracy has betrayed the (in this case, Bolivarian) Revolution and established itself as privileged and corrupt ruling caste oppressing the workers. However, it hasn’t completely betrayed the revolution and is still anti-imperialist and so deserves the support in any conflict with (American) imperialism, even in the event of it using fraud to prevent a pro-imperialist party from coming to power.
Tangently, it was interesting to read the background of the recent revolt in Bangladesh:
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/bangladesh-crossroads-aftermath-peoples-revolution
” the near absence of any democratic accountability, countless violations of human rights and above all the shameless rigging of elections in 2014, 2018 and 2024. In 2014 the entire opposition, including the left, boycotted the election and 153 (out of 300) members of parliament were elected unopposed.
In 2018 the opposition parties along with the left front participated but the election was hijacked the night before when the ballot boxes were filled and the Hasina regime got nearly 100 per cent of the seats.”
Sheikh Hasina fled when she lost support of the army: until then, they clearly blatantly rig elections. the important point is the army decided its future lay in sacrificing Hasina.
So long as Maduro has the army, he will be able to cling on, but he only has the army as long as it suits them, not vice versa.
A Spanish/speaking comrade in the US has drawn attention to an English version of a statement by a different group of Venezuelan Trotskyists:
The headline is not too bad.
More Venezuela news as everybody waits to see if the government there will publish the full results:
https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazils-lula-says-election-could-135511550.html
Apparently Biden himself is in favour of a re-run of the election (but as the lamest of lame ducks does he count any more?):
https://www.yahoo.com/news/brazils-lula-says-maduro-could-144125660.html
The hacktivist group, Anonymous, has been publishing loads of stuff about corruption among the Venezuelan oligarch class. Here’s one example – Cilia Flores, Maruro´s missus, who has been implicated in drug trafficking. There are many more such examples
https://x.com/AnonymousVene10/status/1823881905932058683?t=575P2QRmz-49HS363R8aiw&s=08
These people – the Venezuelan capitalist class – have got seriously wealthy with a network of bank accounts, investments and properties in various parts of the world. This, in a country that has one of the highest GINI indices anywhere. It is a grotesquely unequal society. I cannot understand why the more gullible sections of the left, even allowing for their basic state-capitalist sympathies, would want to support such a regime. It’s so blatantly obvious that this whole “chavismo” thing and the BS about “socialism of the 21st century” is just such a con – a money-making racket
There is an interesting report here that I came across on the links between the regime and organised crime
It’s sad, even tragic, when you come to think of it. Various sincere attempts in Latin America to try to improve the lot of the poor majority get off to an enthusiastic start but then fail. Before the Chavists it was the Sandinistas.
It seems that the Trotskyist analysis that these attempts failed due to a bureaucratic caste taking over and allocating itself privileges (an analysis that they derive from what they say happened in Russia) has some substance. But of course these attempts were directed by a vanguard in the first place, which was always the potential basis for the evolution of such a privileged “bureaucratic caste”.
The only one that seems to have partially achieved something is Cuba which, though still not socialist and still a one-party state directed by a vanguard, has at least provided minimum basic services for all and avoided great disparities of income and wealth developing.
The lesson would appear to be that there is no hope for the people of these countries other than world socialism but socialism depends on the workers in North America and Europe overthrowing capitalism. Until this happens workers and poor people elsewhere are condemned to have to put up with capitalism in one form or another. They are in a trap from which they can’t escape whatever they do or try to do.
Typical example of how the gutter press (which the Daily Torygraph has recently joined) use Venezuela to try to discredit the whole idea of socialism, and why we need to insist that, whatever it is, it is not socialist:
As expected, the Venezuela Supreme Court has ruled that Maduro won the presidential election. But also:
“The TSJ president, who also heads the body’s electoral branch, additionally stressed that the CNE should publish the “definitive results” in the National Gazette before an August 28 deadline. Venezuela’s electoral authority has not published detailed results broken down by voting center.”
So, we still have to wait till next Wednesday to see if the electoral commission will publish results broken down by voting center and how they compare with those put out by the pro-US opposition.
I didn’t know this before — the Maduro government subsidising evangelical Christian churches in a bid to get their votes:
https://www.christianitytoday.com/news/2024/april/venezuela-maduro-evangelicos-elections-chavez.html
It seems pretty clear to me that the detailed breakdown of the election results that the CNE was supposed to present by law are not ever going to be presented. Instead, the CNE is going to go along with the ruling by the Venezuelan Supreme Court that Maduro had won the elections and that the matter is effectively closed.
Extraordinarily, the Supreme Court even suggested that voting tallies published online by the opposition were forged. Technically speaking this is simply not possible. You cannot forge an acta or voting tally which has a QR code and a unique ID number as well as being officially signed off. Within two or three days of the election the opposition had scanned and uploaded over 80 per cent of all the actas produced by all the voting tables throughout the country. The hard indisputable empirical evidence is there to show that Maduro was resoundingly defeated
The Supreme Court and the CNE are both lying through their teeth. Everybody knows this, its an open secret – a cynical political game played people who have no interest in democratic decisionmaking. These bodies are packed with Maduro loyalists. There are exceptions. One member, Juan Carlos Delpino, of the five-member National Electoral Council,(or CNE) did dissent and published a list of irregularities that occurred during the elections. Who knows what is to become of him?
What seems to be happening now is that political opposition to the regime is being repressed. Even official witnesses at the voting centres are being rounded up and imprisoned. We are witnessing the slide into a full-on far-right fascist state.
Interestingly, even Leftist governments in the region have repudiated the regime. In a recent communique, the governments of Argentina, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, Guatemala, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Uruguay condemned the regime
“Strikingly, the communique was endorsed not just by conservative governments that have long been hostile to Maduro’s purportedly socialist movement, but also by the administration of Chile’s progressive president, Gabriel Boric – now one of the Venezuelan’s most outspoken leftwing critics – and that of Guatemala’s centre-left leader, Bernardo Arévalo.
“We are dealing with a dictatorship that falsifies elections,” Boric said after the supreme court ruling, rejecting the idea that Maduro’s regime was leftwing.”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/article/2024/aug/23/latin-american-states-and-us-reject-maduro-vote-certification-election-venezuela-supreme-courtOthers like Brazil, Columbia and Mexico – also leftist inclined, have likewise refused to recognise the result and have called for a detailed breakdown that will simply not be forthcoming.
It is very clear to me that chavismo and the whole idea of so-called “21st century socialism” is a complete and utter fraud. It is a fraud that seeks to hide itself behind such spurious and deluded arguments that if you don’t side with the regime you are a “tool of Western imperialism”. that is quite a pathetic excuse for shoring up what is unquestionably an abhorrent and disgusting capitalist regime presiding over one of the most corrupt and unequal societies on the planet
Maduro and his fat cat capitalist buddies have grown extraordinarily wealthy at the expense of the Venezuelan working class as the activities of the hacktivist group Anonymous are currently demonstrating releasing more and more details of shady bank accounts and enormously pricey properties purchased by the Bolivarian oligarchs in various parts of the world…
https://insightcrime.org/investigations/venezuela-mafia-state/
They’ve still got till tomorrow to publish the detailed results. Let’s hope that you don’t end up with egg on your face!
Of course if they don’t then they will virtually be pleading guilty to the charge of ballot rigging.
“The TSJ president, who also heads the body’s electoral branch, additionally stressed that the CNE should publish the “definitive results” in the National Gazette before an August 28 deadline. Venezuela’s electoral authority has not published detailed results broken down by voting center.”
Do you have the link for this quote, incidentally?
I am pretty sure the CNE are NOT going to publish the “definitive results” – though they might cobble together some fake results. If they published the definitive results it would be curtains for Maduro and he can start making arrangements to reside somewhere else outside of the country – in some posh mansion somewhere and subsist on the fruits of his corruption.
You can’t fake or forge an acta and the results of the voting tallies show he lost by a long way.
Interestingly, more and more leftists are apparently becoming lukewarm towards the regime and even dropping their support for it. Here´s another article Ive come across that once again makes the point that Maduro´s electoral victory was based on a lie
I hope this speeds up the demise of the capitalist ideology of Leftist Chavismo and people see it for the dead end it is – a cover for rampant corruption and working-class exploitation
It’s from this pro-governnent news site:
Venezuela: Supreme Court Delivers Electoral Review Verdict, Confirms Maduro Victory
There is also this which says that the court indicated that the election “results” should be published within 30 days after the proclamation of the result (whenever that was or is).
Exhortó al CNE a publicar los resultados en la Gaceta Electoral, según el artículo 155 de la Ley Orgánica de los Procesos Electorales. “El CNE ordenará la publicación de los resultados en la GE dentro de los 30 días siguientes a la proclamación»”, indicó.
It’s from this pro-governnent news site:
………………….
I wouldn’t trust this site further than I can spit. Its totally biased in favour of the regime. I just cannot see how the CNE can publish any meaningful breakdown of the election results when, empirically and scientifically, the actual evidence shows that Maduro was trounced by a huge margin. The other option available to the regime is to lie through their teeth. Though the vote favoured the opposition I think in reality it was more a vote against Maduro than for the opposition, as such. People are just fed up with the corruption and the grinding poverty…
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