After popular sectors spontaneously took to the streets – the first day after the elections – demanding that Maduro release the electoral records (which after almost 20 days the regime cannot show, establishing fraud) and that they were brutally repressed, the pro-imperialist opposition organized rallies of its base and the government continued its practice of selective repression and imprisonments.
Faced with this situation, with the Maduro regime -civilian-military (which has been carrying out a harsh policy of repression and austerity against the working people) and the right wing led by Corina Machado, with a long history of coups, trying in the first days to measure the balance of forces in the streets, US imperialism demanded that the government show the minutes, right wing governments in the region recognized the victory of Edmundo González Urrutia (Machado’s representative). In the case of Milei, the ultra-right wing president of Argentina was the most obsequious in recognizing the victory of the Venezuelan right wing, even before it did so. The United States first recognized Urrutia as the winner, but then demanded that Maduro show “the proof of his victory” – that is, the minutes.
Faced with this, the presidents of Brazil, Colombia and Mexico (the three most important countries of late progressivism in Latin America) sought to position themselves as mediators by proposing a negotiated solution, an “orderly democratic” transition, in the words of Lula.
Last Thursday, the Brazilian president proposed that Venezuela could go to “new elections” to get out of the crisis: “Maduro still has six months left in his term. (…) If he has common sense, he could call on the people of Venezuela, perhaps even call new elections, create an electoral committee and allow observers from around the world to monitor it.”
This line was followed by Petro, the president of Colombia, who also mentioned the need for the United States to lift the economic sanctions it imposes on Venezuela, a “national and international amnesty” for Maduro and members of his regime and a “government of cohabitation” -with the opposition-, while calling for “new elections.”
Maduro rejected that proposal, but elliptically, without naming either Lula or Petro, he said that “Venezuela has sovereignty, it is an independent country.”
But López Obrador, President of Mexico, broke the “progressive trio” in the face of this plan, when he stated in his usual morning speech: “I do not believe it would be prudent for us, a foreign government, whoever it may be, to give an opinion on something that is up to the Venezuelans to resolve.”
Meanwhile, after these statements, Biden, rushed by a journalistic question about the agreement with Lula’s (and Petro’s) proposal, said “yes.” An answer that the White House’s own National Security Council later had to juggle to change that statement into the official position of the US government. An ambiguous position: they consider it absurd that Maduro has not yet told the truth about the elections held on July 28. For now, US imperialism is betting on a total isolation of Maduro, forcing him to a negotiated exit that does not blow everything up, endangering its own business with the oil company Chevron and PDVSA and, more fundamentally, the danger of regional destabilization if Venezuela enters a situation of high social upheaval.
The Venezuelan right, through its leader Corina Machado, expressed its strong opposition to Lula’s statements, reaffirming her sector as the winner of the presidential elections. Machado and Co. have a plan for Venezuela: to deepen the adjustment carried out by Maduro, the privatization of strategic companies in the country, all of which cannot be done without also deepening the repression of the working class and popular sectors.
Now the right-wing opposition is calling for a “march of marches” this Saturday, August 17, also asking Venezuelans living in other countries (almost 8 million) to mobilize for their victory.
Faced with the rejection of all the actors involved, and annoyed by the refusal of his attempt at mediation, Lula acknowledged on Friday that “they did not like the idea” and that the solution “depends solely and exclusively on the behavior of the Venezuelans.” Lula also insisted on the dissemination of the results table by table, and asked “Where are those minutes?”, before making a harsh criticism of the Maduro government and pointing out that Venezuela “lives under a very unpleasant regime, with an authoritarian tendency.”
The brutally repressive Maduro regime cannot be the solution for the working class. It relies on the Army and uses paramilitary gangs to spread terror, especially among the popular sectors, who demand the democratic right to know the election results in a reliable manner and who are fed up with the precariousness of their lives and the very low salaries to which the government subjects them. But neither is the right, today led by Corina Machado, who in the last coup attempt (2019) called for foreign military intervention in the country and who, as we said, only offers a redoubling of the country’s chains to US imperialism, with the consequence of extreme hardships for the working people.
That is why, first, in the face of the June 28 elections, the revolutionary socialists of the Socialist Workers League (LTS) – a member of the International Network La Izquierda Diario – together with other organizations launched the campaign “The working class has no candidates”, calling for a null vote. And now, faced with the imprisonment of hundreds of people (95% of whom belong to popular sectors) and “unprecedented state repression”, they are launching a campaign for the freedom of prisoners in the protests and against the repression of the poor people, calling for “fighting to build a pole independent of Maduro, the right and imperialism”.
Source: www.laizquierdadiario.com
