Oppose both the government and the opposition in Venezuela

The following is a translation of a statement by Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide) on the recent presidential election in Venezuela. Amid widespread protests and accusations of fraud across the political spectrum, the country’s National Election Council declared current President Nicolás Maduro the winner with a little over 51 percent of the vote.

A member of the International Socialist League grouping of revolutionary organisations, Marea Socialista opposes Maduro’s government and the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The statement appeared on the leftist Venezuelan news site Aporrea on 30 July. It has been translated by the International Socialist Project.

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Although we continue to argue that the working class had no candidates in this presidential election, we defend the people’s democratic right to know what the real result was. We demand that the National Electoral Council (CNE) audit the vote and report on all polling places and electoral data.

Sectors of the Venezuelan people in Caracas and throughout the country have taken to the streets to protest what they feel is the government’s disregard for the great majority of voters. There is a generalised popular demand in the country that large mobilisations from the neighbourhoods express. We defend their right to demonstrate and denounce the repression of a false “revolutionary” government that acts like the repressors who massacred the Venezuelan people on 27 February 1989.

Marea Socialista also does not believe that the results the CNE reported are true. We say this because, in the first place, what is clearly seen and felt on the streets is mostly discontent with the Maduro government and the overwhelming desire to get out of the terrible situation in which it has plunged the Venezuelan people. The CNE has not presented official results and has instead rushed to proclaim Nicolás Maduro the winner, without any transparency in the data tabulation process and with the CNE’s website offline.

Irregularities and arbitrary rulings have plagued the process and the electoral system itself from start to finish. Although they insist that the machines and their data management are “invulnerable”, we all know that the government has engineered a system shot through with manipulation and favouritism, disqualifications, roadblocks to legalising opposition parties, seizure of the assets of civil society organisations, the government’s corrupt use of public resources, censorship and blockading the media, persecutions and imprisonments ...

These measures aren’t solely confined to the conflict between the ruling right wing (Maduro, PSUV, the military and the corrupt bureaucracy) and the traditional right wing, but they are also applied to sectors of the working class and organisations on the left that adopt critical positions or oppose government policies. Added to this are the obstacles to campaigning, retaliations, extortion and threats to voters, especially if they are public sector workers or have some kind of dependence on the state-government.

In addition, there is the curtailment of the right to vote for millions of forced migrants, Venezuelans who are abroad and who have left because of the government’s policies, and who remain angry with it. And to cap it off on election day, the government seized boxes of ballots cast, grabbed official totals from polling stations and engaged in multiple irregularities that would take too long to name. In the end, they give us shoddy and unreliable reports that constitute an outrage and an insult to the voters. That is why people cannot square what they saw at the polling stations and polling centres with what the CNE reported later.

The people have the constitutional right to know how their votes were treated and to have them respected. Let us demand transparency: we must defend the right of the people to have their real votes known and respected. We do not say this to defend votes in favour of a right wing that we know we oppose, but in favour of the people having access to reliable electoral information and to be fully able to exercise their vote, as an elementary matter of democratic freedoms. That is why we demand a thorough electoral audit with citizen participation to verify the results, which is also a constitutional right.

At the same time, we reiterate that, for us, the working class had no candidates in these elections. No candidate faithfully represented its interests. Both leading candidates are right wing, anti-worker and capitalist. The government candidate is the destroyer of the best conquests and rights achieved from the Bolivarian revolution. He stands for anti-worker, right-wing, authoritarian politics that have nothing to do with socialism. What’s more, he is not genuinely anti-imperialist, but is aligned with other capitalist powers that are in competition with the US (Russia, China, etc.).

Maduro expresses the interests of a new “lumpen bourgeoisie” that lives off the embezzlement of the state. Meanwhile, María Corina Machado [the leading opposition candidate, whom the government disqualified from the election] represents the traditional bourgeoisie and the big private employers. This capitalist sector opposes the political power of Maduro’s “Chavismo” but benefits from its policies with the exploitation of an ultra-cheap or practically semi-slave labour force that has been deprived of its salary. Despite vague and opportunistic promises to address this situation, they have no intention of solving it.

We are with the people in the streets to defend their vote. We are on the side of their democratic demands. But at the same time, we mark distance with the political leaderships that are trying to manipulate them or use them as “cannon fodder”. We have seen how the message of Edmundo Gonzalez [the right-wing opposition candidate who ran in Corina Machado’s place] and Maria Corina looks first to the military, as if seeking a decree from the armed forces. The popular response is slipping through their hands.

Whether one or the other [Maduro or the traditional right] governs, from Marea we insist on the autonomous organisation of the people without bosses, without bureaucrats and without corruption. We have said that it is an illusion to think that the “way out” or solution to Maduro’s authoritarian government will come from the opposition of the traditional right wing, whose background we know. Although they fight Maduro for power, they support his policies that have offloaded the economic crisis onto the workers. Maduro accomplished what they always wanted to do. The real solutions that the working class needs will not come from there. If we do not have organisation, political consciousness and strength as a class, we do not have a chance. That is why we cannot follow the politics of those who would subjugate us to the government or exploit us in the factories and workplaces.

Starting with the demand for democratic freedoms and respect for their vote, which is mobilising people onto the streets today, let’s accumulate forces in the struggle for our rights—with unity, consciousness and class independence.

Marea Socialista has called for a united stand of working-class forces, trade unions, activists in defence of civil rights and political organisations that we have convened under the Conference for the Defence of the People’s Rights (PPT-APR, PSL, LTS, PCV-Dignidad). In the election, we and other members of this group campaigned on the slogan of “The Working Class Has No Candidate—Spoil Your Ballot”.

With the Conference for the Rights of the People, we presented common proposals on several points and organised united protests for wages, for the freedom of workers imprisoned for fighting against corruption or in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We aim to sustain and to develop these alliances for unity in action for labour rights, social rights and democratic rights for the Venezuelan people.

We trust only in the mobilisation of the workers and the exploited, and we urge the struggle to recover rights taken away, without believing in bureaucrats, bosses or corrupt people.

Let us build our own political vehicle without selling our conscience to either of the two anti-worker rightists fighting for power and resources.

Let us democratically raise our plan of struggle for our demands, rights and liberties.

The working class and the popular sectors need their own strength both against the authoritarian starvation government of Maduro and the parties and leaders of the capitalist right who are also hangmen disguised as “saviours”.