No other road

New statistics reveal:

2008-02-28T01:09:00.000-08:00

67.3% of Venezuelans approve of Chavez’s management

ABN 27/02/2008
Caracas

67.3% of Venezuelans approve of Hugo Chavez’s record as president, according to a survey conducted by the Venezuelan Institute of Statistics (Ivad) and published by the daily newspaper Panorama.

The results also show that 54.3% of Venezuelans believe the situation in the country has improved. This figure is higher than last year’s result of 41%.

Although 53.7% of Venezuelans regard food shortages as a serious problem, 53% of those surveyed indicated that they believe the situation will improve.

Meanwhile, insecurity remains the single biggest problem for 72.1% of Venezuelans, despite the fact that this concern has decreased by 9.3% from last year’s figure of 81.4%.

The missions continue to receive the highest approval ratings, with 73.1% in favour, against 15% opposed.

The survey was conducted nation wide from the 8^th to the 20^th of Februray 2008 and has an accuracy rating of 90%.

Source: http://www.abn.info.ve

Translation by Owen Richards: http://no-other-road.blogspot.com

PSUV delegates designate Chavez as party president

2008-02-24T03:12:00.000-08:00

Chavez elected PSUV president
ABN 23/02/2008
Puerto La Cruz, 23 Feb. ABN

This Saturday during the second plenary of the 5th assembly of delegates of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the 1861 participating delegates of this revolutionary organization unanimously named Hugo Chavez Frias as president.

Information on the session was provided by the coordinator of the national promotions committee of the PSUV, Jorge Rodriguez, once the plenary, held in the Syria Club of Puerto La Cruz in Anzoategui state, was complete.

Rodruiguez reported that Chavez’s appointment was made with unanimity and applause, and added that it was also decided that the 1861 delegates would form the General Assembly of Delegates that will function as the highest authority in the PSUV.

He commented that likewise, a system of selection for temporary national authorities was approved, which consists of each one of the delegates proposing three names, which will be evaluated by the president of PSUV (Hugo Chávez). He explained that these names will go on to form a list of the candidates to the national leadership, that will be submitted to a voting process where spokespersons, substitute spokespersons and commissioned spokespersons of the 14348 socialist battalions will participate.

In total almost 100 000 300 people will be voting to elect the temporary national directorate of the PSUV, said Rodriguez, and added that the date of the election would be March 8 or 9.

Rodriguez also pointed out that the process will be automated, and the National Electoral Council (CNE) will be asked to monitor the election.

He emphasized that “the national leadership … together with the General Assembly of Delegates, will choose the method of selection and the electoral process for the regional authorities.

He indicated that this same structure will define the mechanism of candidate selection for mayors and governors.

The elected national leadership will have a transitory character, so that during the elections of governors and mayors in November the PSUV will be positioned as a solidly constituted movement.

“In the statutes of the party, the mechanism of universal, secret, direct election of the definitive authorities - who will be chosen immediately after the election of mayors and governors - will be established”, Rodriguez added.

Translation by Owen Richards: http://no-other-road.blogspot.com/

Terrorist action against National Assembly

2008-02-19T16:52:00.000-08:00

Violent opposition attack using explosive causes damage
William Characo, DiarioVea
diariovea.com.ve

Caracas, Monday 18 February. An explosive device was detonated at 3am
in the Jose Maria Vargas office, on the corner of Pajaritos, the
workplace of deputies and some commissioners of the National Assembly.

The massive explosion, which smashed the display windows and caused
material damage to the seat of parliament, could be heard several
blocks away in the province of Altagracia.

It is presumed that the explosion was caused by a C-4 charge as no
remains of a pipe bomb were found in the area, and a shock wave
shattered the windows of the old Supreme Court of Justice.

A forensic police team arrived at the scene and began a thorough
investigation, collecting evidence to determine the kind of explosive
used.

Translated by Owen Richards
http://no-other-road.blogspot.com/
http://au.360.yahoo.com/revolucionbolivarianablogger

Police regulation proposal

2008-02-12T16:21:00.000-08:00

Ministerial council receives proposed Police Law
Miraflores

The national commission of policing reform (Conarepol), through the Minister of Popular Power and Interior Relations and Justice (MPPRIJ), presented on Tuesday to the Council of Ministers the project for the Law of National Policing.

The minister, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin, put forward a proposed law for the regulation of the diverse policing services based on the principles and values established in the constitution.

Chacin emphasized that this new police is orientated toward humanism, eradicating the old praetorian and egoistic concept that the capitalist system has imposed. “Never before in our country has there been an integrated police force”, he said, pointing out that the new police body that will come out of this new law will be oriented on developing the ethics of socialism for the 21st century.

The proposal has been prepared for by over a year of work, involving more than 70,000 people and police services across the nation, and which received contributions of experienced police professionals, researchers and clients from the most hidden corners of Venezuela to the largest cities.

The investigation yielded information on the presence of 126 police bodies in Venezuela with different forms and standards that should be reoriented. The minister said that, it was on these and other conclusions that the national policing law was elaborated and will be presented for the consideration of the Ministerial cabinet.

Translation: Owen Richards <>

http://www.rnv.gov.ve
Prensa Web RNV/VTV
12 Febrero 2008, 06:32 PM

Chavez's military rebellion

2008-02-10T01:14:00.000-08:00

Historic February

Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias

Translation: Owen Richards

Caracas, February 1. ABN.

It was not a small group. Five lieutenant colonels followed by 14 majors, 54 captains, 67 second lieutenants, 65 sergeant majors, 101 troop sergeants and 2056 soldiers. The mission was to topple the government, responding to the popular unrest that had cried with fury three years earlier - also in an unforgettable February - an enormous cry of frustration for the monster that had been made of so-called “representative democracy”.

The men of that February tried to fix things in a country tired of inefficiency and corruption. They belonged to ten battalions and made up part of the military garrisons of the states of Aragua, Carabobo, Miranda, Zulia and the Federal District. They were led by young officers – Hugo Chavez, Francisco Arias Cardenas, Yoel Acosta Chirinos, Jesus Urdaneta Hernandez, Jesus Ortiz Contreras, among others.

They were part of an organization known as the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement 200 (MBR-200), with a nationalist and revolutionary political ideology based on the thought of Simon Bolivar. It was 16 years ago now and in that moment it was impossible to know that the seed had been planted of what we today know as the the Bolivarian Revolution, whose nine years we also celebrate this 2^nd of February.

Why did this group of men risk their lives trying to change a nation? The antecedents and consequences will live forever in this emblematic month.

Perez Part Two

Carlos Andrez Perez enjoyed his second mandate and was sure that the country was the same as when he left it in the 1970s. But the economy was not like then. The external debt had reached 35 billion dollars, one of the highest debts per capita in the continent.

The international reserves had touched bottom and were only able to pay for a week’s worth of imports. Eighty percent of the earnings of 1988 were spent paying the interest on the debt.

A few days after ostentatiously taking power in what many called his “coronation” for all its showiness, Perez had to confront the new reality, under pressure from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

His “great turn” eliminated subsidies and initiated a process of privatization of many state industries. It was a clear neo-liberal program that brought results in cold numbers: if in 1989 the gross domestic product fell by 8%; in 1991 it had a rise of 9.3%.

But at the same time the most vulnerable sectors of society were gravely affected in their standard of living. In that time two thirds of the population lived in poverty, relative or absolute. The price rises in essential items and in transport fares were irreparably damaging.

On the 27^th and 28^th of February of 1989, just two weeks after these economic measures, the disturbances known as ‘El Caracaso’ exploded, resulting in, according to some sources, more than 1000 dead.

The brutal government repression involved the armed forces, which produced a deep disquiet in a sector that disagreed with using military force against the people.

This situation combined the generalized corruption with the political isolation of Perez and his Accion Democratica party into one explosive mix that detonated on the 4^th of February 1992. The officers that rose up had become a kind of military “middle class” that did not support the breakdown of the command.

The assault on the presidential palace began at midnight on the 4^th of February. At the same time, they attacked the presidential residence La Casona, and other important cities of the country. In some cases the confrontations were intense, but finally the insurgents surrendered. From there reverberated the historic “por ahora” (for now) of the arrested comandante that just a few years later became the president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela - Hugo Chavez Frias.

Also in February

Perhaps fatefully, the Bolivarian revolution also began in February, in 1999, after a great popular victory in December of the previous year.

With social justice and participatory democracry as its clear objectives, Chavez began a period of renovation leading a refoundation of the Republic under a socialist vision and through such key actions as the convovcation of a constituent assembly, which was thought to be a process of the re-legitimation of all the powers, always with the direct participation of the people.

Venezuelan men and women became, from that point on, the agents of change, actors in the structural redesign of the country, conceived from the grassroots and with a view to transforming representative democracy into participative democracy for all time.

In this spirit, the head of state had this to say exactly two years ago: “We have a society where the immense majority of Venezuelans are included in the social body, in the national aspiration … the current Venezuela is a society totally different to that of exclusion and privilege”.

Against democracy

There have been several occasions in which the Venezuelan opposition has attacked the legitimate and constituional democracy that today, after nine years, marches on with greater stability, flying flags of sovereignty and strength.

To enumerate some of these attacks it is worth mentioning the 11^th of April 2002 when the government of Hugo Chavez Frias met with a coup d’etat. Nevertheless, the sidnificance of the date lies in the mobilisation of the people who did not stay at home but came out into the streets to defend their revolution, restoring politival and social order in just 48 hours.

Again, in December 2002 and January and February of 2003, another attack was made against the socialist process. This time, it was sabotage against the most important economic enterprise in the nation, the state-owned Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the sabotage attempting to put pressure on the people with such actions as the suppression of basic items such as domestic gas for cooking and petrol for vehicular transport.

This destabilization attempt was also defeated thanks to the efforts of the workers who instead of joining the strike - a strike convoked by organizations like the Venezuelan Conferderation of Wokers (CTV) and Fedecamaras - remained active. Retired oil workers and the armed forces also mobilized.

Two years later in 2004, under the sign of the recall referendum, an election was held with the aim of ending Chavez’s term. But it was not to be. Instead, it marked a new stage for the Bolivarian Government, with the president receiving 59.25% of the vote in favour of him continuing to hold the reigns of the nation.

Revolutionary successes

In the year 2004 a New Strategic Map was launched, a program defining ten directives or objectives for the nation, among them energy and food sovereignty, the latter being an issue that has occupied the attention of the Chief of State for the last few years, who has embarked upon numerous actions in this direction.

Two years later, the presidential elections on the 3^rd of December 2006, Chavez began his second constitutional period, whose first axis was to look at the proposal of the Ley Habilitatnte (Enabling Law) that permits the executive to legislate on necessary matters to further the changes toward socialism.

This initiative constitutes the first element of the Five Motors of the Revolution promoted by the national government. The second, the Constitutional Reform represents a general phase that was attempted, through the referendum of this past December, but failed to gain a majority of votes. To agree with the president, the moment that he decided to propose to the population a Magna Carta was probably a little hasty: “Maybe the people were not ready or prepared to assume the socialist project”.

The third motor of the revolution, Morality and Enlightenment, is the national project by which is understood a campaign of moral, political, military and social education, that goes beyond the schools, because it will be present in the factories, the fields, the endogenous nuclei and other popular entities.

Chavez named the fourth motor the New Geometry of Power, defined by a new way of distributing the economic, political, social and military powers on the national level through the revision of the political-territorial distribution of the country and the consequent construction of systems of cities and federal territories.

The Revolutionary Explosion of Communal Power is the fifth motor, intimately related to democratic participation, which according to the Venezuelan leader, has the greatest force and will depend on the success of the previously mentioned revolutionary axes of this new era of the public administration that today arrives at nine years.

The three ‘R’s

Revision, rectification and to re-propulsion. Three linked actions that result in the optimization of a successful period. Three actions that are not accidental and, refer in the first place, to all the internal revision that should take place in the socialist structure in train. In the second place, a kind of self-analysis by which to modify harmful conduct for the change, and finally, the re-propulsion of the revolutionary process.

The results of this past 2^nd of December have much to do with this initiative of president Chavez, who proposes for this 2008 to reverse the flaws that have given place to the constitutional reform being suspended “por ahora”.

To activate mechanisms that respond to the raising of the three ‘R’s, it’s necessary that such reforms find means of execution through extensive debate in the communities for the sake of reaching a popular consensus that gives a green light to the project.

In retrospective, the advances outweigh the setbacks, and the failures have been skillfully made into successes. In advancing, continuity can be foreseen in a period that points towards the prolongation of the socialist method, protected in a humanist and educated democracy as a space for participation and inclusion.

Towards there we journey always taking notice of the importance that the month of February has had in all the changes that today we live through as a nation and those that are yet to be attempted.

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