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Chavez speaking openly and honestly about the failures to date of the Bolivarian project
“The ’99 constitution was infiltrated by some counterrevolutionary interests, let’s remember the case of Luis Miquilena and Alfredo Pena.“In those days I had to firmly oppose many articles that attempted to leave things like they were.” ” (Miquilena was a key adviser to Chavez in the early stages of his presidency. Pena was elected mayor of Caracas as a Chavez supporter. Both were moderates who joined the pro-capitalist opposition to Chavez when he introduced laws that affected the interests of the rich in 2001. At that time Chavez was reluctant to even call himself a socialist .
Both these advisors helped ensure that the initial economic policies of the Chavez government did not break decisively with a neoliberalist ethos .
“We would have to revise the economic framework” of the constitution, We have made economic achievements, but we have hardly impacted on the redistribution of the national rent. The poorest class has improved its income due to increases in the minimum salary and the provision of free health care, free schooling. That undoubtedly has been a relief, but the upper classes have also benefited from economic growth much more so.
“The gap between an enriched elite and the lower classes, instead of reducing, has grown. We have to revise this. For example, those from the banking sector have been the ones who have made the most money, for whom growth in the first semester of 2006 is 40%, that is billions of bolivares in profits, that has to be revised.
“In the political sphere, we need to revise the revolutionary democracy, elevate to the constitutional level the issue of power for the people, the communal councils, direct democracy and defence of the state.
“Many people told me, during the coup, that I should decree an emergency, but I don’t have the faculty, not even to intervene on a television station. An emergency does not give the state the ability to take extraordinary measures like were necessary on April 11 2002, when uniformed generals came out on television stations calling for a rebellion in support of the coup.”
On the housing crisis facing the millions of poor living in vast barrios that strecth for mile upon mile without proper sanitation , facilities or electricity
“We will shortly launch a new mission, named Villanueva (New Home). For example in Catia we have already located an area that is occupied by large sheds that we are going to acquire. If they belong to the state then occupy them; if they are private, expropriate them.”
“We will knock down those sheds and we will construct small buildings. We will bring down an entire neighbourhood. This is one part of Mission Villanueva. The second will be satellite cities, like the one we want to do in Maracaibo, facilitating its inhabitants with public transport."
That was back in 2006 . Those projects are now well underway .excess from Venezuela’s foreign reserves is now being used to invest in a decade-long $2 billion per year housing plan.
chavez addresses these issues week in week out on television and radio shows where the ordinary citizenry themselves are permitted address him directly with their problems and frustrations . No other leader on this earth does that , not one. Most certainly no dictator would even entertain the notion .
Between 1998 and 2005, the number of local cooperatives in Venezuela went from under 1000 to more than 100,000. Thats a radical transformation of society . But that transformation has been continually arrested by the bitter divisions within the chavez camp - the left wing of the PSUV and the right wing who oppose fundamental and radical change and seek to retain as much of the old order as possible under a chavista banner . It was that division which caused the abstention of almost 3 million votes from the chavez camp which saw the opposition squeak a hairs breadth victory in the referendum last year and temporarily defeat the fundmetal changes to venezuelan society Chavez had presented to the public . Thankfully the latest referendum has been a further step forward . Ultimately there will be a decisive battle between the left and right within the chavez camp , and the latest referendum victory was a key step in that direction .
Its within the chavez camp the only actual opposition even exists . The non psuv opposition either engages in coups , calls for assassinations , continually refuses to recognise the result of elections and even refuses to participate in them . Thats not a parliamentary opposition , thats simply a nest of treasonous dogs . A real dictator would have eliminated them a long time ago but chavez has never strayed outside the confines of the constitution no matter what the provocation .
the talk of dictatorship is ridicul;ous . It flies in the face of the facts and emanates solely from the mouthpieces of those who stand to lose most from the transformationof venezuelan society into a participatory and socialist democracy .
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Originally Posted by Clanrickard
