  Venezuela, its presidential elections and the leftHavana, 08/24/05. – In this first quarter of the 21st century, a prophecy by Friedrich Engels seems to have been forgotten: “The day will come when the great workers’ struggles will move from the barricades to the ballot boxes.” Of course, it is foolish to think that the hand of the US special services is not behind the attempts to hinder or frustrate the advance of the left in Latin America, which the nation of the Potomac has considered its "backyard" since the Monroe Doctrine ; History, the most implacable of teachers, offers ample evidence; it is by no means impossible that Washington's hand is at work, right now, in the very controversial Venezuelan presidential elections.  However, this journalist will never forget one of the damning sentences of the man who was his best boss in Cuban State Security, from which he is now retired: “The special services only work based on real conflicts, which they stimulate or discourage according to their interests and objectives.” If instead of looking at the beam in the eye of the US government, its “ethically unacceptable” economic sanctions against Venezuela and “the hand of the CIA,” one chooses to also look at the beam in the eye of Chavismo-turned-Madurismo, a good question is why, according to the National Electoral Council of Venezuela, 48.04% of those who voted did not vote for the government; that is, a “trifle” of 5,810,619 Venezuelans, not counting the approximately 5 million emigrants whose right to vote is enshrined in law , but were able to vote? How is it that – according to the press – only a minimal percentage could do so? What would have happened if those migrants had been able to vote? Does anyone realize that attributing to the CIA the fact that more than 5.8 million voters did not vote for Maduro is like awarding “The Company” a gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympics? Whether you like it or not, fighting for freedom, social justice, and solidarity is futile if it is not supported by credibility. Just ask Fidel Castro, who, between brilliant successes and glaring errors, never lost sight of the principle of “never lying or violating ethical principles” of his concept of Revolution. Suppose there is one thing that is happening in the controversial Venezuelan elections. In that case, it is not so much the expected hostility of the United States or the international press but rather a loss of credibility that, with more or less elegance, is being demanded by men of the proven left, such as Lula, Gustavo Petro, Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO), Gabriel Boric and others, whose demands for electoral transparency will be successful? They demand it, even at the price of the loss of power by Maduro's government, because what is at stake is the credibility of the left in Latin America and, therefore, the future of utopia. Criticism of these statesmen is already appearing, coming from cheap propaganda, the offspring of ignorance, dogmatism, the so-called caviar left or vulgar vested interests. To cite just three examples of who these leaders are, Lula gained his prestige as a metalworker and union leader who successfully confronted the criminal Brazilian military dictatorship and contributed to its downfall; but who doubts that he was at risk of being assassinated?; Gustavo Petro was a member of the M-19 , an important Colombian guerrilla movement; he was arrested and tortured; AMLO, a politician with a brilliant career, was in some way the replacement for the assassinated Luis Donaldo Colosio (1994), who aimed to be a president who was an enemy of traditional Mexican political corruption. :quality(85)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/infobae/YUA2ZHGKFFHPNIZ3OV7IT63HHQ.png) Doesn't it seem shameful to criticize these men for demanding electoral transparency from Maduro, for asking that the minutes of the process be published, and for the saying that "he who does not owe nothing does not fear nothing"? Has anyone understood that by doing so, the opposition - 80% of the total, it is said - takes the lead in credibility over Maduro's government? How do these leaders of the Latin American left take the fact that an alleged cyber attack from North Macedonia has prevented the publication of the electoral records after the prestigious Russian cybersecurity firm Kaspersky announced that it did not register attacks on Venezuela during the presidential elections? In passing, Biden banned that company from operating in the United States.  Not just Kaspersky: Patricio Ballados, deputy head of the Carter Center mission in Venezuela, told Deutsche Welle :
This journalist adds: according to the Electoral Transparency organization , as prestigious as the Carter Center, the National Electoral Council declared Nicolás Maduro the winner with only 80% of the votes counted, which is equivalent to more than 2 million pending counting. At that time, the difference between Maduro and Gutiérrez was 704,114 votes. By simple arithmetic, nothing was definitive. What grounds were there for declaring the president the winner? Is it understood that men like Lula, Petro, AMLO, are makers of Friedrich Engels' prophecy, and that therefore they viscerally reject the slightest suspicion of fraud? Add to this the scandalous fake news, such as the clumsy hoax that opposition candidate Edmundo González Urrutia was or is a CIA agent and participated in crimes in El Salvador. If there is so much talk about “the hand of the CIA,” would the latter have allowed the selection of such a vulnerable man for political purposes? Since when are Langley's bosses imbeciles?  González's alleged CIA card has been circulating on social media and, as we know, cheap propaganda vibrates with euphoria. A simple search on Google Lens was enough for this journalist to uncover the hoax.  As early as July 4, “fake hunter” Efecto Cocuyo noted: 1) “Edmundo González Urrutia’s CIA ID is fake and was created using a design template available on the internet since 2016”; 2) “The identification is written in Spanish and presents inconsistencies in the dates, in addition to the inclusion of a QR code, which did not exist in 1980 when it was supposedly issued”; 3) “This card was created with a template that has been circulating on the Internet since 2016, 'with online editing software that uses a base template with the initials MAC-SOG' according to findings by our colleagues at the Venezuelan Observatory of Fake News (OVFN)”; 4) “Likewise, the fact checking unit Verificador LR of the Peruvian newspaper La República, noted that the alleged CIA card of the presidential candidate of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD) is written in Spanish, and being a North American agency, it should be written in English”; there is also no evidence linking Edmundo González Urrutia with the civil war in El Salvador or the CIA. However, so that no one dares to say that this journalist does not include other views, here is a TeleSur report in which testimonies appear from Salvadorans who accuse Edmundo González of the alleged commission of crimes in El Salvador when he served in that country as a diplomat. What a coincidence! These testimonies appear more than forty years after the crimes and in the middle of the Venezuelan electoral campaign? What did these accusers do to achieve justice and punishment when the left governed El Salvador and was a staunch ally of Chávez? 5) “Although the incorporation date into the CIA is 1980, the identification has a QR code, which is incongruous because QR codes were created in 1994. CIA cards have a duration of 10 years, as evidenced in the comparative image of Verificador LR .” Bolivia Verifica joined the unmasking of Efecto Cocuyo on July 22, which can be consulted here . The sad thing, and at the same time outrageous for this Cuban journalist : Cubadebate joined the hoax on July 30, and Cubainformación.tv on the 31st. Couldn't a minimal verification be made, or did "The Orientation" prevail, in the ironic words of a colleague of iconic prestige? By the way, cheap propaganda seems to “suffer from amnesia”. Total silence about Edmundo González Urrutia, who was Chavez’s ambassador to Argentina (1998-2002); he played a prominent role in Venezuela’s incorporation into MERCOSUR, and is considered a centrist politician, in favor of dialogue with Maduro if he wins and of a smaller extension of the state sector, but “without touching” the state oil company PDVSA, but rather improving its management and investment policy, to “get it out of the basement”. According to Deutsche Welle, “Current oil production levels in Venezuela are far from the (3.3 million) barrels per day of 1998, as well as from the 2 million barrels per day that Nicolás Maduro promised at the beginning of 2022 that would be reached in December. According to data from OPEC’s October 2022 report, the oil industry in Venezuela, despite high world oil market prices, has only been able to produce 723 thousand barrels per day. Compared to 1998 levels, this amount represents a loss of 78 percent of its production capacity.” Whether you like it or not, the back-and-forth in the Venezuelan electoral contest is a challenge to the credibility of the left in Latin America. I hope he wins.
By NOTE: The author is a retired Cuban state security agent still living in Cuba. * Cover image: Nicolas Maduro, Maria Corina Machado and Edmundo Gutierrez. France 24. https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=pfbid08LT2AwrvNrxc9xCVbwufa9r4MQVuSz4FyJsrXMDqqSeGY6JEUz2equBydx4gRSKwl&id=1254699969&sfnsn=mo&mibextid=RUbZ1f Cuba denounces the irresponsible attempts to resort to violence and destabilization with the aim of producing a coup in Venezuela Statement by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs August 1, 2024 On Sunday, July 28, 2024, the Venezuelan people expressed their will that comrade Nicolás Maduro Moros continue to be their President. They decided in favor of the defense of peace, independence and self-determination of their Homeland. In the face of imperialist harassment, external interference, media and political manipulation and the opportunistic onslaught of the oligarchies and their representatives, the Venezuelan people decided to maintain their majority support for the option founded by Commander Hugo Chávez Frías and which has been sustained in the face of threats and external aggression, under the leadership of President Nicolás Maduro Moros, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and its allied parties. The Bolivarian and Chavista people defeated in recent periods the violence of paramilitary groups fed from abroad that mourned many Venezuelan families, the assassination attempts, the armed incursions of mercenaries and the imposition of a supposed president without any authority or legitimacy whatsoever. It resisted unilateral coercive measures and economic sabotage, among other actions aimed at subverting the constituted internal order. We denounce that, under the pretext of not recognizing the official results of the electoral process, in agreement between international actors and sectors of the internal opposition and in ignorance of the powers of the Venezuelan State, a return to the stage of the use of violence and destabilization is irresponsibly encouraged in order to propitiate a coup against the powers of the State to overthrow the legitimate government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela. With that purpose, the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) met to analyze the presidential elections in Venezuela, when that organization lacks moral or legal authority to settle matters that only concern Venezuelans. Considering the long history of the OAS in the service of U.S. imperialism, of meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign states in our region, the support and promotion of coups, military dictatorships, repression and torture exercised by governments fully supported by the United States, there is no basis for an internal process such as the elections held in Venezuela to be analyzed there. The double standards with a clear ideological bias of the discredited Secretary General, actively involved in the acts of violence in Venezuela in 2019, in the support of a self-proclaimed president without being elected by the people and in the promotion of the coup d'état in Bolivia in that same year, just to cite the most recent events, would be enough to disqualify the maneuver held today in Washington. In an unusual manner and with no respect for the internal order of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela or any other nation, the United States and some members of the OAS tried to impose in its Permanent Council a resolution urging the Venezuelan electoral authority to recount the votes cast on Sunday, July 28, with the observation of international organizations, a demand that is not made to any country. However, the dignified attitude of a group of countries prevented the approval of the interfering document. A major conflict in Venezuela, as some seem to stimulate in opposition to the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace, would have unpredictable and very negative consequences for the entire region. On July 14, 2017, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz warned, "those who seek to overthrow by unconstitutional, violent and coup-like means the Bolivarian and Chavista Revolution will assume a serious responsibility before history." We reiterate Cuba's firm support and solidarity with the Bolivarian Government led by comrade Nicolás Maduro Moros and the civil-military union of the heroic Venezuelan people. Havana, July 31, 2024 |
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