PSUV Secretary General Diosdado Cabello. File photo.
The leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) announced that it is strictly prohibited to carry out campaigns, to promote candidates or oneself, to exert pressure on grassroots organizations, or to make use of public institutions in the process leading up to the nominations for public office positions to be determined in the upcoming May 25 elections.
This was announced this Monday, February 24, during the weekly PSUV National Directorate press conference, by PSUV Secretary General Diosdado Cabello. These prohibitions will be clarified in a new article that will be added to the party statutes, he noted.
“We are making it clear and in writing that it will be considered a negative behavior and a very serious fault to incur in these irresponsible actions,” Cabello said. “The National Directorate of the PSUV and the High Political Command reserve the power to decide on cases where such serious indiscipline occurs, which may lead to the suspension of party membership and/or the removal of one’s status as a potential candidate.”
The PSUV leader explained that the party took this action after witnessing that “many are playing offside, and we have been calling them all, each one with their file.”
“We called a person who had well-made ads, we sat him down, we warned him, we told him not to do that anymore, and he went out to do better ads,” recounted Cabello. “Now, he has been suspended from any political activity.”
Cabello added that a second paragraph in the new article will state that any person who has been reprimanded for committing any of the offenses in question “will not be accepted as a candidate by any party of the Great Patriotic Pole.”
Commemoration of “El Caracazo”
This February 27 and 28, 35 years after the Caracazo rebellion that marked a historic change in Venezuela, the PSUV will carry out a series of activities in Guarenas and Petare, Miranda state, and will also hold a large march, Cabello announced.
Cabello recalled that the attacks of the Venezuelan military on February 27 and 28, 1989, were carried out against the social movements and working people of Venezuela. During the Caracazo, the administration of Carlos Andrés Pérez unleased a wave of violence against a spontaneous uprising triggered in the streets of Venezuela by the government’s neoliberal economic policies, including sudden increases in the price of public transportation. These economic “shock policies” were carried out at the request of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) headquartered in Washington, DC, USA.
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“He came to office on 4 February 1989, and on 16 February, to the surprise of his own followers, he declared he was going to apply a neoliberal, IMF-dictated ‘shock therapy’ to the country at once, and without anaesthetic,” recounted Hugo Chávez in the book My First Life. “Supported by his development minister, Moisés Naím, and his planning minister, Miguel Rodríguez Fandeo, and advised by Jeffrey Sachs—then a huge fanatic of ultra-liberalism—Carlos Andrés announced the ominous measures of the ‘neoliberal package’: trade liberalization, abolition of exchange controls, massive privatization of state enterprises, drastic cuts in social programmes, increases in the price of essential products and services.
“Of all these decisions, two put people’s backs up the most, both related to the price hike of oil-based products: an unbelievable 100 per cent on the price of petrol, and 30 per cent on public transport fares. The poorer classes, who three months earlier had voted for Carlos Andrés, viewed this savage ‘structural adjustment plan’ as a stab in the back.”
Up to 5,000 Venezuelans were massacred by the military during the Caracazo. This tragedy inspired some members of the military, such as Hugo Chávez, to turn against the neoliberal government and chart a different, revolutionary course for the country. These events eventually led to the mass support that Chávez enjoyed and to his stunning electoral victory in 1998.
(Últimas Noticias) with Orinoco Tribune content
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
OT/JRE/SL
