Tag Archives: Venezuela’s National Assembly

Oct
8
2010
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Chavez: “Nobody and nothing will stop the Bolivarian revolution”

This article was originally posted by Pravda

“There will be no pact with the bourgeois nor lack of revolutionary balance,” said Chavez who is also president of the PSUV. He said the priority will be to advance the construction of socialism in the rhythm that circumstances require. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said that nothing or nobody can stop the advance of the Bolivarian Revolution, the process of change began more than a decade ago. He made a call to deepen the changes undertaken in 1999 so daring in its execution, but based on the principles of more detailed planning and with a scientific character.

“We must create the conditions for accelerating the expansion of socialism, to be gradually substituting capitalism to be replaced for the new model ,” Chavez insisted.

During a meeting held the previous day with the elected representatives of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), he urged the organization’s members to work tirelessly with views towards the 2012 presidential elections.

It is necessary to create the conditions for achieving an overwhelming victory in next elections, he pointed out.

Chavez recalled that right-wing forces have not discarded the option of a coup to overthrow progressive movements that have emerged in the region and advised the opposition not to make mistakes, he stressed.

In referring to the new composition of the Venezuelan parliament, which will assume office in January 2011, he affirmed that it will enact laws much more revolutionary than the current National Assembly.

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Sep
29
2010
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Chávez, on the Ropes

This article was originally posted by The New Republic

Sunday’s parliamentary election in Venezuela saw Chávez’s governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela slump to a landslide. Chavistas walked off with 59 percent of the seats in Venezuela’s single-chamber National Assembly on the back of just 48 percent of the vote, all thanks to a well-known list of unfair voting conditions that left the playing field far from level: an aggressively gerrymandered map, massive rural overrepresentation, and blatantly biased election rules approved by a blatantly biased Elections Commission.

Though routed in the seat count, the vote felt like a win—and a coming of age—for opposition activists. Gone are the days when the words “Venezuelan opposition” conjured a hodge-podge of ancien regime holdovers and reactionary cranks. The vote was a milestone in the opposition’s gradual transformation into an organized mass political movement able to credibly challenge Chávez for the allegiance of everyday Venezuelans.

Working in tremendously challenging circumstances against a hyper-empowered petrostate that had put all its resources into the campaign, the opposition’s umbrella Roundtable for Democratic Unity (the unfortunately anagramed M.U.D.) went toe-to-toe with chavismo, coming within 90,000 votes (out of eleven million cast) of matching their tally. (A small anti-Chavez left-wing party got the remaining 3 percent.)

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Jun
17
2010
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Venezuela’s Land Reform: The Government’s Latest Attack on Private Property and Ownership Rights

Late Tuesday night, Venezuela’s National Assembly approved a land reform law which gives the Chávez government control over the production and distribution of food and agricultural products (in Spanish). 
 
Ironically, the new law comes two weeks after roughly 2,300 container-loads of food imported by the government were discovered rotting in the port of Puerto Cabello. Some of the spoiled food – milk, meats, and sugar – are the same basic products Venezuela has seen shortages of in recent months.
 
One of the articles of the new land law establishes that “large estates and privately-owned plots are systems that contradict justice, equality and social peace in the countryside.”
 
The new law calls for the “agricultural expropriation” of land plots for the benefit of the farmers who work those plots. Critics of the law, however, point out that the law is nothing but another attack on private property and an attempt to give the State “ownership of the land.” 
 
Since President Chávez rose to power in 1999, the State has seized about 2.5 million hectares of land; only 50,000 of those are currently active. Experts estimate there are about 30 million agricultural hectares in Venezuela which can be cultivated.