This government lacks epic, it does not elicit any kind of emotion, it lacks sacred reasons to fight for; quite the contrary, it has led our country to the worst economic crisis in its history, by imposing a rightist package; it destroyed PDVSA and the entire productive apparatus. Moreover, it has given our oil, gas, the Essequibo, and the Mining Arc to transnationals. It has caused the exodus of four million Venezuelans, while 6.8 million more are suffering hunger. At the same time, we have become a country in which the human rights of its inhabitants are massively violated.
We are governed by an intolerant group with a rightist project that has brought ruin and despair to our people; one which subsists because of its authoritarian nature, through the implementation of cruel mechanisms of social control, violence and the support of the political-military elite and private sectors which control today all the institutional and economic spheres of the country.
It is not a revolution. It does not represent anything new; it does not offer welfare, nor does it guarantee the life, nor the Fundamental Rights of its citizens. It demobilized the people, tore down the Social Missions and the People’s Power, as well as the Participatory and Protagonist Democracy. It destroyed the revolutionary consciousness and spirituality, as well as solidarity and work as fundamental values of the society. It betrayed and, like Herod, killed the Bolivarian and Chavista dream that rallied millions of Venezuelans for 14 years. He extinguished the passion and hopes of the people of April 13, those who defeated the Oil Sabotage, making the people now fight for a box of poor quality food.
It is a government that permanently violates the Constitution and the Laws; one that has turned our homeland into a country fueled by fear and violence, where nothing works or is guaranteed; one where everyone does whatever they want, where everything is chaos, without salaries, money, food, medicine, gasoline, gas, water, electricity, transport, and much less, future.
This is the government of a new power group: the madurismo. A combination of selfish, opportunist interests, a coalition of incompetence and chaos that has nothing of revolutionary or leftist. It is the “endogenous right”, the “Chavismo without Chávez” that was so often talked about and that now desperately seeks some sort of agreement with the extreme right to allow it to survive and keep them cohabiting in power.
However, in order to remain there, they need to put on some sort of revolutionary façade. Therefore, the maduristas continuously abuse and overuse the name and memory of Commander Chávez. Despite destroying the country and his work, they still cling to his name to maintain some kind of support among the humble and leftist sectors in the region.
They use Chávez, his image, his name. They manipulate the Chavista feelings in the hearts of the people, by, among others, using his videos and images at convenience, editing them; but deep inside they know that if Commander Chávez were alive, he would have risen up against this government. For much less of what is happening today, Commander Chávez revolted on February 04, 1992.
It is not the first time in history that, after the death of the leader, a revolution is betrayed by bureaucracy, the party or the power groups that grew under its shadow. It is not the first time that the principles are betrayed and the domination order is restored, or that the transformative momentum and the mobilization of the people are killed so they can become the ones with privileges, the executioners of the revolution they were supposed to defend.
The madurismo is now faced with the pressing need of maintaining a great lie, a major scam: proclaim themselves Chavistas but betray the legacy and destroy the work; consider themselves revolutionaries but establish by violent means a rightist economic crash program; call themselves patriots but privatize PDVSA and hand over the oil, gas and the Mining Arc; consider themselves laborers but steal the benefits and labor rights, imprison workers and union leaders; call themselves anti-imperialists but try to reach an agreement through back door channels, surrendering the sovereignty, handing over the natural resources and strategic companies to Russian and Chinese transnationals; declare to be “in the fight against corruption” but their inner circle, their leaders, men and women of trust, are neck-deep in the corruption in PDVSA, in the food import business, in the Clap boxes, in the debt, in the gold.
They have something they need to say to the Sao Paulo Forum, to left-wing movements, to left-wing leaders. They fuel fear and blackmail the popular movement to keep the people and Chavista sectors demobilized with the fatalist idea of “putting up with maduro”, “whatever maduro says”, even if he is serving the country in a silver platter to the extreme right and foreign interference.
We are facing a “flabby”, corrupt government, filled with obese leaders who demand sacrifices of their people while they have lavish dinners. It is an isolated, rotten government that has nothing to demonstrate, not a single project, a social or economic index, not a conquer, nothing heroic or noble. They conceal everything, remain silent; they know that they have nothing to show. They resort to lying and manipulating, following the technique and knowledge taught by their “partners”, representatives of companies to which they are giving the country. They have achieved mastery of that.
For that reason, maduro tries to create around him an epic that he certainly does not have, thus resorting to the epic of twitter, to fiction, and manipulation 2.0. It is surprising how much relevance the government gives to twitter, to “trends”, to “trending topics”, to “hashtags”. The number of hours and resources spent reviewing social networks, ruling according to what they say is shocking.
The entire government lives off twitter. They have created a virtual reality only available to those who have access to smartphones. They have turned twitter into the battlefield of the diatribe and hatred, into the battlefield of the “bots” of the government and the opposition. They have turned “influencers”, TV hosts, and any madman that uses twitter to vent his frustrations, into the new political actors.
Unfortunately, they have been very successful at using these fireworks to create their politics, that of a “digital paper tiger”; one with which they are capable to persecute, promote an attack against any political opponent, pursue moral lynchings, lie, and manipulate, fuel hatred by using disqualifications and falsehoods as the arguments of this nonsense.
They can deceive more than one naïve person thousands of miles away, or soothe the conscience of leaders that will never again set foot on a slum, those who dare not to get off a “motorcade” to confront the people and their problems or bring the political commitment to the level of “retweet”. But the truth will prevail, fiction becomes unsustainable and the disconnection with reality makes them weaker, far more vulnerable. One of these days, they will find out they have been ousted because they will be global trend.
The more the “epic of the twitter” advances, the more people suffer. The bureaucrat little cares if children die from not having a bone marrow transplant or a medication. To them, the problem is that the tragedy “does not become a trend”. To the minister, the problem is not that the oil production continues to drop to 600 thousand barrels of oil per day. To them, the real problem is that the disaster does not become “trending topic”.
Maduro does not care that the country is torn apart due to his terrible government. To him, the important thing is to remain in power, thus he needs to find more excuses, new lies: the “conspiracy”, the “corruption”. Now “the sanctions” serve him well. The minister does not care about the blackouts, what is important is to insist cynically on the theory of the “electromagnetic attack” or the “infamous iguana”. Likewise, he must assume rehearsed stances, following a script, to announce any of the new raids and attacks against any political or military leader to whom the madurismo has decided to persecute or imprison. Also the prosecutor, without being able to contain his own contradictions, resorts to posting “philosophical reflections” about his “integrity”, while cynically “regreting” the assassination of the Navy Captain Rafael Arévalo, even when his office has not said or done anything about this case. Meanwhile, the oppositionist only cares about insulting or discrediting anyone who has a different opinion to the “need for an invasion” or to “applaud the sanctions”, in addition to the usual hatred, insults and death wishes for the adversary, getting carried away by the hate speech and the easy attacks. There are plenty of examples. It is a rather important phenomenon to observe, both in the madurismo and in the extreme right. Very serious things are happening in the country, but these are “commanded” from an animation-hate show or through a “twitter”, using a “hashtag” praising maduro or turning every new scandal or holiday into a trending topic, however insignificant this may be.
It is the extreme exercise of poor politics. It is a symptom of the lack of legitimacy and arguments both of the madurismo and the extreme right, one of the reasons why we are in a such an absurd political situation that, unfortunately, it seems that will only have a violent outcome.
maduro, whatever you say is irrelevant but dangerous.
In a press release, I addressed maduro’s infamous declarations in which he, once again, obsessively insults me and accuses-sentences me while threatening me at the same time. He again demonstrates his excessive hatred against PDVSA and its workers. I am truly convinced that maduro is a dead man walking, that his time is over and that he will go down in history as the worst president we have ever had. Such a sad role he has had to play, to be the Herod of the Revolution and Chávez, betraying his trust and leading our people to a situation of indescribable suffering and despair unimaginable only six years ago.
But although maduro lacks credibility and morals to make value judgments, and much less to accuse me of anything, his declarations are dangerous because they come from the head of a government that does whatever he wants with the country; a government where human rights are violated, where the right to defense, name or reputation are nonexistent, where the due process is not respected, where there is no separation of powers; a government in which the prosecutor and the judiciary act under the orders of maduro, where the intelligence and police forces, as wells as paramilitary groups, are capable of doing anything.
To more than one hundred PDVSA workers maduro’s accusations-condemnations have meant a protracted illegal kidnapping that, in some cases, has lasted for over five years, without having the first hearing. To others, it has meant death in custody, such as the unfortunate case of former minister Nelson Martínez.
Maduro’s attacks and obsession against me are not only dangerous but disproportionate. He has all the power and instruments, which he uses and abuses at will. I am exiled. Maduro will continue to accuse me and lie, saying anything, from that I am responsible of the mess that he himself caused in PDVSA, and of any wrongdoing in the country, to the absurdity that I live in a palace in Italy or Monaco. The connection is absolutely disproportionate. The candor of those who honestly ask for it and the cynical attitude of those who challenge me is to call me to return to the country to defend myself, «if I have nothing to hide», knowing that there is no rule of law, nor court with moral to judge anyone. They do not even allow me to be interviewed and they sabotage any media that do so. I think that for someone responsible for this disaster and for so many crimes, for someone who is the head of a sanctioned and isolated government, incapable of leading the country, all of this personal obsession is unhealthy and dangerous.
I will continue to be consistent with my ideas and principles, with the greatest loyalty to President Chávez and the Venezuelan people. This unyielding position has cost me being persecuted and offended by the scoundrel, by the madurismo and the extreme right. I could not care less, I will continue to tell the truth; everything I have to say, debunking infamies, contributing with the liberation and reconstruction of our homeland, always adhering to the most sacred interests, always next to the Venezuelan people. We shall be victorious!