President Chavez casting his vote

Sunday saw a key test of the strength of the Bolivarian revolution in Venezuela, with elections to the National Assembly.

The opposition to the revolution, which is composed of the middle and bosses classes who are angry about losing their monopoly over Venezuela’s wealth and political power, and who are funded by US imperialism, had a big push for the elections. For the first time since President Chavez was elected in 1998, they seemed to have got their act together a bit. For years, they have been bitterly squabbling amongst themselves, as they tried to come to terms with the fact that the poor majority of Venezuelans had no interest in their right wing politics any more. In the last Assembly elections in 2005, they knew they didn’t have a chance in hell of getting anywhere, and so pretended there was a chance of fraud and refused to participate.

As a result, for the last five years the National Assembly has been almost entirely dominated by supporters of the revolution. Having over two thirds of the parliament allowed the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and their allies to pass laws quickly, appoint officials to national positions, and generally not really have to care what the US puppets in the opposition thought.

But this time around, knowing that international observers and anyone with any common sense knows that Venezuela is ultra-democratic, and allegations of vote rigging would just look stupid, they got together to finally put together a united slate for the elections, the Democratic Unity Roundtable or MUD.

Given that last time they didn’t stand at all, winning anything would have been an advance for them. Internationally the media built up MUD, claiming they were set to win big. But realistically, everyone knew the revolution still has the support of the majority. The big question was, would PSUV be able to win a two thirds majority (110 seats)?

In the end the tally left the socialists just short of what they needed to retain a ’supermajority.’ But they still have an overwhelming majority of the seats, with PSUV having won 95 seats so far (three have still to declare), giving it 58% of the seats. MUD won 62 seats, or 39%, while the Fatherland For All party (which is pro-revolution but not part of PSUV) won 2. Under Venezuela’s revolutionary constitution 3 seats are reserved for representatives of indigenous peoples, and those that took them are part of neither side.

The make up of the newly elected assembly

This means that the government will still be able to pass normal laws and are still in control of the assembly, but it leaves more scope for the opposition to slow things down, force the government to negotiate with them, and generally make a nuisance of themselves. Laws that relate to issues in the revolutionary constitution have to be passed by two thirds majority, so that will now be more difficult. And the assembly also appoints positions such as the Supreme Court and the Electoral Council, which the opposition will now have some say in.

Socialists in Venezuela were still celebrating the victory, even if it wasn’t as strong as they would have liked. As President Chavez put it himself on Twitter: “The election was a solid victory, sufficient to continue deepening democratic and Bolivarian socialism. We must continue strengthening the revolution!”

He added at a press conference: “Nothing extraordinary happened. Something extraordinary would have been if we won 130 deputies, extraordinary would have been if we lost the majority.”

When you compare the support the government to other countries, especially the US or UK, it enjoys an unbelievably high level of popularity, considering how long they have been in power, and how difficult the economic circumstances are. Nevertheless, the election didn’t give the socialists as good as a result as they have often enjoyed in other electoral tests. There’s several reasons for that. The video below goes into a lot of them, but I’ll try and outline them briefly as well:

- The economic situtation for Venezuela has been difficult, as it has for every country. The economy shrank last year, as did most other countries in Latin America. However, this problem has been vastly overstated by the anti-government media, both in Venezuela and abroad.

- There’s been a big problem with electricity shortages over the last few months. Venezuela depends on hydroelectric dams for most of its electricity (which is a good thing, there’s almost no fossil fuel input), and there’s been a severe drought (at least in part due to climate change) that has affected their ability to generate energy. On top of that, during the years that electricity was privatised before the revolution, the private companies put very little investment in, meaning that the grid is outdated and over taxed. The solution that workers are fighting for to this problem is expanding socialism and workers’ control in the electricity industry.

- A major corruption scandal was discovered this year, involving bosses at the state owned food company PDVAL. State food companies sell food at prices much lower than in the normal supermarket, to allow the poor to have access to healthy, nutritious food. But it turned out that some bosses had been hoarding food in order to make more money for themselves. Although there’s an ongoing vigorous investigation, it obviously reflects badly on the government.

- General dissatisfaction that change isn’t happening fast enough, and that social problems such as rampant crime remain major issues. The revolutionaries are divided between the radical, pro-socialist and direct democracy advocates, and those who are more “pragmatic” and “moderate”. For example, although the government has been trying to promote ‘communal councils’, which are organisations of direct democratic self rule at a local level, many local politicians and mayors see them as a threat to their authority, and are trying to block their work. The opposition has not done anything particularly new in the last couple of years, but some of the failings of the revolutionary government have left some people disenchanted, and less willing to turn up and vote socialist.

Venzuelan voters show the ink on their fingers, which signifies they've voted

The solution to all of the problems facing Venezuela is, of course, deepening the revolution and expanding the construction of socialism. This article has a lot of concrete suggestions of ways to go about that. But what’s been farcical has been watching MUD and their international pals try and claim that the socialist election victory was in fact a rejection of the revolution.

“Here it is very clear, Venezuela said no to Cuban-style communism, Venezuela said yes to the path of democratic construction and now we have the legitimacy of vote of the citizenry, we are the representatives of the people,” said María Corina Machado, who was elected deputy of Miranda state.

MUD tried to claim they had won the majority of the popular vote, something that was actually total bollocks based on counting the Fatherland For All deputies as members of the opposition, but which was faithfully reported in the international media.

In fact, comparing the opposition’s performance this time around to the last election isn’t really comparing like for like, because last time they didn’t stand. If you compare their results this time to the last election they actually participated in (2000), they actually lost 20 seats! New revolutionary deputy Roy Chaderton called their claims a “media farce”.

“They can celebrate whatever they want, but it is striking that they are celebrating when they have obtained 20 fewer seats than the last time when they had deputies in the National Assembly,” he said. “The reality is that, compared to the elections for the 2000-2005 session, they have 20 fewer deputies elected, and the government has won enough support to elect 3 more deputies than what it had in that period.”

“In the case of the National Assembly, it’s good that the opposition are now part of it, that’s where they should be, but they withdrew in 2005, hours before the beginning of the electoral process, to try to delegitimize it, and, besides, hoping that the [US] Marines would do their dirty work to replace President Chávez,” he emphasized.

Chaderton explained that “between 2005 and 2010, as they didn’t participate and withdrew for the negative motives that I explained, they can now claim that their representation has increased 6,600%, but all that is part of the media farce, corrupt deals, fake news to mislead the national and international public opinion, with the complicity, of course, of the international Far Right.”

Taking a look at the British media, it seems that they are either very confused about what’s going on, or in fact just tools of this right wing propaganda campaign against Venezuela. The latter is surely the case for Rupert Murdoch owned Sky News, who seemed all mixed up about the results, talking about “massive gains” for the opposition. Although their article has been fixed now, a picture caption down the page originally claimed that PSUV hadn’t won a majority!

Even worse is the coverage of the supposedly left wing Guardian newspaper. I’m a great fan of their site, and it’s my main non-socialist place I go to check on the news, but consistently the information they give readers on Venezuela is utter pish and propaganda. This week they saw fit, just after the government won a election internationally verified as completely democratic, to run a poll in which the majority of their daft readers voted that Chavez is a dictator!

Full of nonsense: opposition demonstrators

What this proves is that the supposedly impartial western media, including the BBC and the Guardian, are hopelessly compromised when it comes to reporting Venezuela. Venezuela is the country on Earth today that has put socialism back on the agenda of the human race, and offered a beacon of hope to people struggling all over the world. Faced with that kind of threat, the international ruling class are going to make sure all of their media outlets are pumping out the maximum anti-socialist propaganda they can. If you want to get the real low down on what’s going on in Venezuela, the best source is the excellent Venezuela Analysis site. And of course, when important stuff is happening, you can also count on this blog to give you full coverage!

Bonus: Check out former Cuban President Fidel Castro’s message ahead of the elections: “I would not fail to vote as a sacred duty: whatever time it is, before the rain, when it’s raining, or after the rain, as long as there is a polling station open. If I were Venezuelan, even under thunder and lightning, I would fight to the limit to make September 26 a great victory.”

There’s a full state by state breakdown of the results here.

Global outrage at Israel's brutal attack on the Gaza aid flotilla

When Israel announced that they were holding their own inquiry into their massacre of aid activists on the Gaza Flotilla, which happened at the end of May, it wasn’t a massive surprise when their ‘impartial panel’ proved to be a total sham. As we reported at the time, Israel predictably hand-picked a panel mostly consisting of retired Israeli generals, some Canadian military hack with a dodgy human rights record, and David Trimble, Ulster Unionist politician and renowned bigot and sectarian knobhead.

But you’d maybe expect that, for all its faults, the United Nations, an international body which is kind of meant to be as impartial as they come, would manage slightly better on this front. Somehow, however,  and quite incredibly, the UN have managed to top all of Israel’s shameless whitewashing – they’ve only gone and picked Alvaro fucking Uribe as the vice-chair of their ‘independent’ panel of inquiry into the attacks. Uribe is the outgoing President of Colombia, famous for his friendly, diplomatic and impartial bouts of killing trade unionist, funding right-wing guerillas and being best pals with some of the world’s most notorious drugs barons, at least when he’s not too busy stoking up war with his neighbours and receiving billions in aid from the United States, that is!

Israel has been in the news the past couple of days for practically provoking a war with Lebanon following military excursions which skirted the Lebanese border, leaving five dead – including a civilian journalist – when things spilled over into gunfire a few days ago. As it happens, Colombia has also been in the news for much the similar (without any killing… yet), constantly accusing neighbouring Venezuela, and the left-wing government of Hugo Chavez, of harbouring left-wing guerillas who form one side in the relatively low-intensity civil war that’s been going on in the country for decades. Although there’s absolutely no evidence that this is the case – all Uribe has been able to offer is a couple of dodgy photos from a few years ago that were probably taken in Ecuador anyway (which Colombia illegally invaded in 2008 on the same justification). Chavez has quite understandably been getting a bit unnerved at these persistent threats emanating from Colombia, given that it’s no secret that the US government would quite like to bump him off and a proxy war through Colombia is probably their best bet for doing so now, after their countless failures to depose Chavez domestically and halt the ongoing revolution .

Uribe and Bush share a joke about how many commies they killed last week

Uribe’s regime in Colombia have consistently failed to investigate reports of systematic torture, human rights abuses and extra-judicial murder in the country. Invariably, these have been against the left-wing opposition – including the now infamous cases of Coca Cola bottling plant workers who faced execution by paramilitary death squads because they’d tried to fight for better wages and conditions, or even just been a member of a trade union. It’s crazy that the UN thinks a man who has well documented links to fascist paramilitaries, cocaine trafficking and mass abuses of human rights in his own country is possibly capable of impartially investigating a massacre of civilians abroad.

And for the inquiry to be announced  in the same week that the UN Secretary General was summoned by the Venezuelan government over serious concerns about a Colombian attack is just taking the piss, and whether intentional or otherwise, sends a clear endorsement to Colombia’s US-sponsored imperialist warmongering. An MEP from the United Left party in Spain, Willy Meyer, has already slammed the decision as like “like leaving a fox to guard the chickens”, adding that Uribe presides over a country with “the largest mass grave in Latin America”.

Don’t hold your breath for the inquiry’s results!

We think Chavez is cool, and not just because he is obviously a pirate.

In a stunning victory for the working classes in both Scotland and Venezuela, and much to the chagrin of the imperialist pigdogs that control the media, President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela has announced that he is to employ 200 new staff members to help him deal with the daily deluge of twitter @replies he is getting from the Scottish Socialist Youth. Already there’s been a clear positive response, with Chavez commenting on our blog, “jajajaj chicos, ¡que diversión!” (‘hahaha guys, very funny!’). Sources point to a soon-to-be-announced extension of the Bolivarian Revolution to Scotland. It is set to begin with the Maryhill branch of the Scottish Socialist Party declaring independence from the unionist swine in Westminster and becoming officially annexed to Venezuela. The rest of Scotland will soon follow suit, and join the international struggle. A twitterquake will follow, with #SSYbloginitiatesworldsocialism becoming the top trending topic, EVER!

Nah, only joking, he’s not got back to us yet… But it is true – Hugo Chavez’s twitter account is now such a popular forum for Venezuelans attempting to voice their grassroots concerns to President Chavez that he has employed 200 people to help him sort through all of their comments and requests, replying to as many as they can. It’s been hugely popular, with his followers set to hit the 1 million mark by the end of this month.

It’s not been without trouble for the President, who says that over 18% of the comments he gets are just pure abuse. But he takes it in good spirit, tweeting back jokes to people that think sending Hugo a nasty twitter message is going to break the Revolution’s spirit!

Far from being a waste of money and staff time, clearly Chavez is taking the internet seriously and agrees with SSY that it will be one of the major battlegrounds in the struggle between ideas that will shape the 21st century. It’s also an easy and simple way for Venezuelans to directly petition their government, and for the government to keep in touch with the basic concerns (in 140 characters) of the people. He’s using social networking websites to cut through bureaucracy and allow people to directly hold the President to account, and we applaud him for doing so. He has created a fund to address the problems the people of Venezuela face that they have contacted him to ask for help with – mostly related to housing and health, so it’s already having a real impact on the lives of Venezuelans that otherwise would still be feeling alienated from the political process.

So SSY decided to get in on the act and send Hugo some greetings from Scotland, and the link to this here humble blog. We wrote

@chavezcandanga ¡Saludos desde Escocia! le invitamos a Hugo Chavez pasar por ssy.org.uk ¡Que viva la revolución socialista internacional!

I see u, spoiling Doctor Who over twitter.

Which says “Greetings from Scotland! We invite Hugo Chavez to check out ssy.org.uk. Long live the international socialist revolution!”. One of the drawbacks of twitter is that you must fit each message in to 140 characters of less, so although we’d have loved to have said more we were a bit limited for space. But we are FULLY confident that Hugo will receive our message and be so bowled over by our witty, irreverent yet SERIOUS take on socialism and politics that he will set the wheels in motion for the Venezuelan-Scottish superstate of dreams.

Our hope is that young socialists in Venezuela will be able to use our blog as a source of information about the socialist struggle here in Scotland and the UK, and we’d love to get updates from comrades involved in the struggle in Venezuela about what affects their lives.

SSY would also love to invite the PSUV (the United Socialist Party of Venezuela, of which Chavez is the leader) to send some young members along to our socialist summer camp this August, where they could learn about socialism from a Scottish perspective and share their experiences of living in a socialist country and the pressures they face from the capitalist forces that regularly attempt to undermine the Bolivarian Revolution and other progressive movements in South America. ¡Que viva la revolución socialista internacional!

The Venezuelan government has attempted to ban Family Guy because they think it promotes Marijuana use. Cable TV stations which don’t stop airing the show will be given hefty fines.

Justice Minister Tareck El Aissami said the programme should be pulled from the airwaves after being outraged by a recent episode in which the show’s characters started a campaign to legalise the drug. You can see the episode in question here.

Venezuela’s radical government has a lot of support amongst socialists, but there’s a lot of controversy about TV.  Cable television stations are used as a front to undermine the government and their radical policies, leading to attempts to ban the cable TV companies altogether and set up state-owned TV. It’s a question of priorities – should people or companies with offensive views still have a right to freedom of speech?

(In November last year, a revolutionary Venezuelan band called La Redonda visited Scotland and were keen to meet other young socialists – several SSY members met up with the band to discuss various issues, and the whole meeting was filmed on shown on Avila TV, Venezuela’s radical stated owned TV station.)

Anyway, I’m sure you all know that Leftfield is definitely in favour of freeing the weed and supports Family Guy in the struggle.

If Family Guy should be banned for anything, it should be for its treatment of domestic violence and rape – they make so many ‘jokes’ about violence against women that they’re practically promoting it.