Here we print a translation of a statement by Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide), a Venezuelan socialist organization opposed to the government of Nicolás Maduro and the PSUV (the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, the ruling party), and member of the grouping of revolutionary organizations, the International Socialist League (ISL), on the recent presidential election in Venezuela. Amidst widespread protests and condemnation of fraud across the political spectrum, the country’s National Election Council (CNE) announced Maduro the winner with a little over 51 percent of the national vote. This statement appeared on the leftist Venezuelan news site Aporrea on July 30. The ISP translated it.
Although we continue to argue that the working class had no candidates in this presidential election, we defend the people’s democratic right to know what the real result was. We demand that the National Electoral Council (CNE) audit the vote and report on all polling places and electoral data.
Sectors of the Venezuelan people in Caracas and throughout the country have taken to the streets to protest what they feel is the government’s disregard for the great majority of voters. There is a generalized popular demand in the country that large mobilizations from the neighborhoods are expressing. We defend their right to demonstrate and denounce the repression of a false “revolutionary” government that acts like the repressors who massacred the Venezuelan people on February 27, 1989.
Marea Socialista also does not believe that the results the CNE reported are true. We say this because, in the first place, what is clearly seen and felt on the streets is mostly discontent with the Maduro government and the overwhelming desire to get out of the terrible situation in which it has plunged the Venezuelan people. The CNE has not presented official results and has instead rushed to proclaim Nicolás Maduro the winner, without any transparency in the data tabulation process and with the CNE’s website off-line.
Irregularities and arbitrary rulings have plagued the process and the electoral system itself from start to finish. Although they insist that the machines and their data management are “invulnerable”, we all know that the government has engineered a system shot through with manipulation and favoritism, disqualifications, roadblocks to legalizing opposition parties, seizure of the assets of civil society organizations, the government’s corrupt use of public resources, censorship and blockading the media, persecutions and imprisonments….
These measures aren’t solely confined to the conflict between the ruling right wing (Maduro, PSUV, the military, and the corrupt bureaucracy) and the traditional right wing, but they are also applied to sectors of the working class and organizations on the left that adopt critical positions or oppose government policies. Added to this are the obstacles to campaigning, retaliations, extortion, and threats to voters, especially if they are public sector workers or have some kind of dependence on the State-Government.
In addition, there is the curtailment of the right to vote for millions of forced migrants, Venezuelans who are abroad and who have left because of the government’s policies, and who remain angry with it. And to cap it off on election day, the government seized boxes of ballots cast, grabbed official totals from polling stations and engaged in multiple irregularities that would take too long to name. In the end, they give us shoddy and unreliable reports that constitute an outrage and an insult to the voters. That is why people cannot square what they saw at the polling stations and polling centers with what the CNE reported later.
The people have the constitutional right to know this: to know how their votes were treated and to have them respected. Let us demand transparency: we must defend the right of the people to have their real votes known and respected. We do not say this to defend votes in favor of a right wing that we know we oppose, but in favor of the people having access to reliable electoral information and to be fully able to exercise their vote, as an elementary matter of democratic freedoms. That is why we demand a thorough electoral audit with citizen participation to verify the results, which is also a constitutional right.
At the same time, we reiterate that for us the working class had no candidates in these elections. No candidate faithfully represented its interests. Both leading candidacies are right-wing, anti-worker and capitalist. The government candidate is the destroyer of the best conquests and rights achieved from the Bolivarian revolution. He stands for anti-worker, right wing, authoritarian politics that has nothing to do with socialism. What’s more, he is not genuinely anti-imperialist either, but is aligned with other capitalist powers that are in competition with the U.S. (Russia, China, etc.). Maduro expresses the interests of a new “lumpenbourgeoisie” that lives off the embezzlement of the State. Meanwhile, María Corina Machado (the leading opposition candidate whom the government disqualified from the election) represents the traditional bourgeoisie and the big private employers. This capitalist sector opposes the political power of Maduro’s “Chavismo,” but benefits from its policies with the exploitation of an ultra-cheap or practically semi-slave labor force that has been deprived of its salary. Despite vague and opportunistic promises to address this situation, they have no intention of solving it.
We are with the people in the streets to defend their vote. We are on the side of their democratic demands. But at the same time, we mark distance with the political leaderships that are trying to manipulate them or use them as “cannon fodder.” We have seen how the message of Edmundo Gonzalez (the right-wing opposition candidate who ran in Corina Machado’s place) and Maria Corina looks first to the military, as if seeking a decree from the Armed Forces. The popular response is slipping through their hands.
Whether one or the other (Maduro or the traditional right) governs, from Marea we insist on the autonomous organization of the people without bosses, without bureaucrats and without corruption. We have said that it is an illusion to think that the “way out” or solution to Maduro’s authoritarian government will come from the opposition of the traditional right wing whose background we know. Although they fight Maduro for power, they support his policies that have offloaded the economic crisis on the workers. Maduro accomplished what they always wanted to do. The real solutions that the working-class needs will not come from there. If we do not have organization, political consciousness, and strength as a class we do not have a chance. That is why we cannot follow the politics of those who would subjugate us to the government or exploit us in the factories and workplaces.
Starting with the demand for democratic freedoms and respect for their vote that is mobilizing people onto the streets today, let’s accumulate forces in the struggle for our rights, with unity, consciousness, and class independence.
Marea Socialista has called for a united stand of working-class forces, trade unions, activists in defense of civil rights and political organizations that we have convened under the Conference for the Defense of the People’s Rights (PPT-APR, PSL, LTS, PCV-Dignidad). In the election, we and other members of this group campaigned on the slogan of “The Working Class Has No Candidate – Spoil Your Ballot.” With the Conference for the Rights of the People we presented common proposals on several points and organized united protests for wages, for the freedom of workers imprisoned for fighting, against corruption or in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We aim to sustain and to develop these alliances for the unity in action for the labor rights, social rights and democratic rights for the Venezuelan people.
We trust only in the mobilization of the workers and the exploited, and we urge the struggle to recover rights taken away, without believing in bureaucrats, bosses, and corrupt people.
Let us build our own political vehicle without selling our conscience to either of the two anti-worker rightists fighting for power and resources.
Let us democratically raise our plan of struggle for our demands, rights, and liberties.
The working class and the popular sectors need their own strength both against the authoritarian starvation government of Maduro and the parties and leaders of the capitalist right who are also hangmen disguised as “saviors.”
July 30, 2024
