"A BATTLE HAS BEEN
LOST,
BUT NOT
THE WAR"
(The
following article is from
the January 1-15,
2008
issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles
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From
Tribuna
Popular,
Caracas
Secretary General
of the Communist
Party of Venezuela (PCV) Oscar Figuera, paraphrasing Che Guevara, said
that "from a defeat more can be learned than from victories." During
his weekly press conference on Dec. 3, Figuera gave a preliminary
analysis of the results of the Dec. 2 referendum on Constitutional
reform proposed by the President of the Republic, Hugo Chavez Frias.
Figuera
indicated that results and events experienced by the Venezuelan people
must lead to their extracting the great lessons that will strengthen
the Venezuelan revolutionary process. He explained that "what happened
yesterday is a new episode of the class struggle, of the intense
ideological combat that is developing in our country in relation to its
transformation, to the advance of the revolution and the interests of
our people," adding that "a battle has been lost against imperialism,
but not the war."
The PCV views
the electoral experience as a clear example of the confrontation of the
different visions of the country that exist in Venezuelan society.
"That is what was at stake yesterday," said the PCV leader.
On one side
was the national oligarchy with its objective to maintain its
capitalist and exploiting regime, which used lies to manipulate the
results, operating through mass media in its service, "with an entirely
relentless offensive, manipulating old and ancestral fears and
historical prejudices," emphasized Figuera.
He added that
"a proposal directed to deepen democracy, with an ever more popular
content, of transformation of the State, redistricting of the
territory, all to elevate the quality of life of our people, was faced
with a campaign where this was falsely presented as a threat to
personal property, a threat to the family and a threat to religion,
three traditional values of capitalist society."
One of the
elements which filled the Communist Party of Venezuela with
satisfaction was that half of the electorate who participated, did so
with a deep consciousness of the advance to socialism: "In spite of the
results of referendum, we have made an immense qualitative advance in
the popular consciousness; it is far from negligible that more than 4
million Venezuelans have chosen socialism, within the framework of an
infernal media campaign," said Figuera. He reminded us that eight years
ago that level of development of the collective consciousness did not
exist.
According to
the PCV's analysis, the 3 million voters who abstained, and who make up
the difference between the total vote obtained in the 2006 presidential
election and the Dec. 2 vote, "continue to trust Chavez, because they
did not vote against Chavez, but were simply not convinced of the value
of the Constitutional Reform and were neutralized by fear."
From the
lessons of the election the PCV selects some, within the framework of a
preliminary evaluation, said Figuera: "The Communists will persist in
deepening the ideological battle that aims at dissolving historical
fears... We must eliminate oversimplified slogans and deepen the
ideological battle in the heart of our people."
Another
lesson that the Venezuelan Communists draw is that "In every
revolutionary process, the existence of a political and revolutionary
instrument and a unified collective leadership that leads the
revolution is necessary and irreplaceable." The PCV "will continue
working in that direction," Figuera said, "because history demonstrates
that to confront the ruling class's army the construction of the
political instrument of the revolution is necessary and irreplaceable."
A third
element from this experience is that in the end the opposition
recognized and made its own the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic
of Venezuela. "This is a step forward, after they confronted this
Constitution in 1999 and the following years, that this opposition came
to recognize that this Constitution is the most advanced in the world,"
said Figuera.
But he warned
that apparently this defence of the Constitution was merely an excuse
to reject the advances and deepening contained in the reforms, since
General Baduel (former defense minister who broke with the Bolivarians
and with Chavez) in his speeches talks of a new Constituent Assembly,
which "leaves us perplexed that they defended the 1999 Constitution and
they accepted it as a national project, but today they no longer find
it useful." Figuera added "It appears that what is involved is the
attempt to raise a slogan that maintains an atmosphere of
destabilization."
Found at:
http://www.peoplesvoice.ca/articleprint09/"A_BATTLE_HAS_BEEN_LOST,_BUT_NOT_THE_WAR.html