by TAMARA PEARSON – TELESUR TV
A mural depicting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at the entrance of a school in Caracas, Venezuela PHOTO/AFP/Getty Images/CAPX
On December 6, Venezuela held its 20th election in 17 years and one of its most difficult yet. With the opposition upping the ante in terms of media attacks and sabotage, 2.5 years of economic difficulties and since the passing of revolutionary leader Hugo Chavez, not to mention a recent right-wing victory in Argentina, the left and right around the world turned anxious eyes to Venezuela.
Ultimately, the Bolivarian revolution — the “Perfect Alliance” of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and other supportive parties and organizations — lost at the polls with the right-wing, US-backed opposition winning at least 99 seats, and 19 still to be decided. Eighty-seven is necessary for a simple majority.
But what does this electoral loss for the revolutionary forces mean, politically, and given the current context in Venezuela, what will the consequences of it be, going forward?
Key factors
1) As usual, this year the disinformation by the opposition media has been intense. The opposition’s main campaigning was through local and international media and social media, with very little street campaigning.
2) Many of those who do generally vote for the opposition do so because they want to vote against the government (and everything demonic and evil the private media has made it represent, “Castro-communism,” where even droughts are the national government’s fault) or for ambiguous “change” after 16 years of Chavismo, without being particularly concerned or aware of what that change is. Many of these people are of course upper class people who resent the empowerment of the poor that has come with the revolutionary process, but their ranks have been swollen by those frustrated by the last two years of serious difficulties.
3) Other key factors bringing people to the opposition include encouragement by the right-wing victory in Argentina, with a Trump-like figure due to swear-in as president on Dec. 10, and younger generations in Venezuela who now don’t remember what it was like in Venezuela before Chavez was elected in 1998 (18-year-old voters would have been 3-years-old at the time).
4) But while the opposition has attracted some of the less politically aware social sectors to its anti-Chavismo discourse, the government has also lost some ground from conscientious and solid revolutionaries, partly due to its lack of a solid response to the opposition’s “economic war”. Although it’s easier said than done to combat a rentier state, capitalist system, historical corruption, and big business’s campaign of economic sabotage, Maduro has only announced things like national commissions to deal with the situation.
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