Venezuela’s Supreme Court has intervened against the Communist Party, which has been a traditional ally of Chavismo since the start of Hugo Chávez’s Bolivarian revolution, but has in recent years taken a critical stance on Nicolás Maduro’s more authoritarian tendencies. The decision of the Constitutional Chamber, published this Friday evening, appoints a new ad hoc executive board, in which at least five of the seven members are members of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). The decision, which has already been witnessed by other major opposition parties, represents a new blow to freedom of association in the country, a week after the same body intervened by the Venezuelan Red Cross.
The communist leaders had been warning of this possibility for months. Tensions with the Maduro government had escalated. The formation had harshly criticized the economic policies for their neoliberal shift and exploitation of the Orinoco mining arc. Party leaders even called for the president himself to be investigated as part of the prosecutor’s anti-corruption purge campaign. The communists have accompanied the constant protests by teachers’ unions and other public workers demanding higher wages. Last year, at the meeting of the communist and labor parties at the Havana Convention Center, the world capital of the most orthodox communism, they condemned Maduro, who was part of the political support of Chavismo, while Venezuela has become the main supplier of fuel and crude oil from the island.
This week they raised the finger again, this time at Trujillo state governor Gerardo Pérez of the PSUV, who asked that presidential candidate María Corina Machado be “removed” from her tour of the Andean region as part of her election campaign. to the primary elections of the opposition.
According to the Supreme Court’s verdict, the organization “rejected the attack on the Venezuelan Communist Party by an arbitrary court decision advocating the establishment of a mercenary leadership in the service of the PSUV-led leadership.” ” The same maneuver was repeated as in other parties, such as the Acción Democrática, where a group of citizens acts on behalf of the leadership, creating a parallel structure that ends up arguing with the structure chosen by its members. In this way were also other left formations supporting the Chavismo, such as Patria Para Todos, Podemos and Movimiento Tupamaro, were put on trial.
The Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV) has two deputies in the National Assembly. One of them, its secretary-general Oscar Figuera, denounced that they had repeatedly suppressed his right to speak in debates. It remains to be seen how they will be received in the next legislative period. “This procedural fraud, which violates the political rights of the PCV and Venezuelan workers, not only creates a serious precedent in the country’s political and legal history, but also exposes the authoritarian, anti-democratic and reactionary nature of the government.” -PSUV that he wrongly believes that with this maneuver he will subdue the Venezuelan communists,” they added in the statement. The formation has also said it will seek to mobilize an international response from its allies to this prosecution.
The communist leaders have directly targeted Diosdado Cabello, the vice-president of the PSUV, for the maneuvers against the party. The same week that the legal attack on the PCV took place, Cabello, along with other Chavista leaders, visited Havana, signed a cooperation agreement with the Communist Party of Cuba, the only legal party in that country, and met with Miguel Díaz-Canel. . The trip was seen as an expected step in the nearly century-old Communist Party’s takeover of power so that it would not further hamper Maduro’s stability, which appears to be hardening after a period of tentative economic and diplomatic opening-up again. ahead of the 2024 presidential election.
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The Chavista leader said that “Cuba and Venezuela are the survivors of all inventions aimed at overthrowing social projects that enlighten other peoples who want to be free” and that with the signing of the agreement between the two parties, “the mutual support is institutionalized together”. work at international level”.
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