Venezuela! The Unfolding on December 6.
Venezuela! The Unfolding on December 6.
By Les Blough in Venezuela. Axis of Logic
Wednesday, Dec 2, 2015
The battle for control of the National Assembly (parliament) is coming down home stretch here in Venezuela with the elections in only 4 days on Sunday, December 6. On the side of the Bolivarian Revolution, the Chavista political parties have never been more unified and Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD), the opposition’s “unity party”, is as fractured as ever with infighting among their party factions and individual right wing members and non-members. It’s always been the case that what unites the opposition is their hatred for anything related to or produced by the Chavista government, their love for life in the United States based upon their Cable TV and Miami-bred fantasies and the dreams of individuals to be first in position to receive the fruits of a neoliberal takeover. The polls taken in the leadup to the current elections are “all over the place” and really, tell us nothing about what will be the actual results as their “scientific” methods are spurious; and on both sides of the political spectrum, left to right, have their own political agendas. One such example is their claim that President Maduro has only a 20-24 percent approval rating, published over the last several months in the corporate media. One has to live here and see the immense support for Maduro by the masses to see the absurdity of this falsehood. On the other hand, polls showing that Maduro has an extremely high approval rating must also be taken with a grain of salt. So we ignore the polls and examine other criteria, not to make predictions but to try to understand undercurrents and trends leading up to the elections. These are some of the factors that we believe will influence voters on December 6:
Strengths and Weaknesses of the Opposition
Lack of a plan for the nation: The opposition, funded and advised by the US State Department, has never presented a cogent plan for the nation and their election campaigns this time are no exception. Campaigns of opposition candidates consist of street rallies and promotions on radio and television, and supporters gathering to hear their speeches across the country. But they primarily depend upon:
Media Attacks: Systematic, personal and national attacks by the opposition fed to the international media on the Maduro government and current Chavista-controlled National Assembly have increased with each passing year. These attacks parrot the tried and tired, for the most part false accusations by Washington, their European allies, HRW and other NGO's. They almost always center around accusations of government corruption, drug trafficking, human rights violations and inept economic policies.
Economic War & Sabotage: Years of sabotage of the infrastructure and food distribution, the latter creating long lines in the marketplace for specific key products and services, continue. These consist of selected foods which disappear from the shelves and magically reappear after a few weeks or a couple months; personal hygiene and household products; delivery of kitchen gas; electrical outages; interruption of telephone and internet services, smuggling of subsidized products into Colombia for profit, worker strikes and more. The timing of sabotage for the upcoming elections were felt here in this city of La Victoria, an hour west of Caracas, population 300,000. For a period of about 6 months, March – August, we lost only lost electricity for 3-4 short periods. But beginning in September, electrical outages have been almost daily. Likewise, the lines at supermarkets were reduced to small pockets of people waiting for the delivery of an item to be delivered that day. Since the beginning of November some of the lines are enormous, waiting for a delivery of corn flour, laundry detergent, milk, shampoo and other products. Yesterday, I observed two lines leading to one of the 4 big supermarket chains here, each about two blocks long. When all is said and done, these US-opposition tactics are designed to make daily life miserable or at least difficult, intending to grind down the will of the people. Their hope is to either:
•cause people to blame the government for corruption, incompetence and inefficiency; or,
•show their power and cause people who don't blame the government to conclude that the Maduro government simply cannot stop them. Can't stop them, so they might as well give up.
More:
http://axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/Article_72356.shtml