Last week (October 8) President Maduro asked the National Assembly to grant him especial powers through an enabling
law, in order to “fight corruption and the economic war.” He addressed the
assembly in a three hour long, mostly read discourse. He did not give many specifics
of the new laws he would decree with the especial powers, but he did reiterate some
of the central themes that have become central to the government’s rhetoric in
the last month: the revolution is fighting a psychological, political, and
economic war against its enemies, and only by granting him more powers can he
defeat this threat.
The President insisted that
corruption is basically a problem of the opposition, but also acknowledged that
it is found within his government. However he explained that corruption is something
inherited from the “capitalist” past and will only be overcome through a new
ethic based on socialism.
...we are now on the
offensive in this truly decisive battle, and we will not abandon this
offensive. I therefore call the People to not allow corruption and the corrupt;
to not tolerate corruption, be this yellow collar corruption or red collar
corruption, it is the same, dressed whichever way it is the same anti-Fatherland
(apátrida) and anti-popular conduct.
Long and bloody has been the
war our country has had to fight to reach full democracy, [to reach] the
splendor of republican life. Democracy, a republican life, it must be said,
were always under threat by the representatives of Capital, domestic or
foreign, first by a ruthless colonial domination, characterized by the most
barbaric of plunders. Then, after gaining our independence and after the libertarian
struggles of the nineteenth century, we witnessed the emergence of a landowners
cast. They reserved for themselves the rights to fence huge ranches that had as
only limits the frontiers of the Fatherland. Later, with the discovery of oil
we saw the emergence of a bourgeoisie and a business class who finally
plundered all the riches of the land and managed to take control of governments.
These governments had as their only function to keep a watch over the
privileges of the bourgeoisie and of the sectors that negotiated in this
country without limits.
We can conclude that all forms
of government we have known until 1999 were based in complete and cowardly
obedience to the economic interests of the transnationals and a parasite and
unproductive local bourgeoisie.
These reflections lead us to
underscore that the Venezuelan economy is currently facing a very special
juncture, the productive apparatus of the country is being hit very strongly by
a series of distortions such as: speculation and hoarding, smuggling, the
illegal foreign currency market, a set of difficulties that perhaps we could
name as “cavidismo” [in reference to CADIVI, the currency exchange government
agency], as one of the most vulgar expressions of the existence of a parasite
bourgeoisie in the last 100 years of Venezuelan history. This is “cavidismo”:
the current trend in the obstinate tendency of certain economic sectors to
claim earnings [without] producing them. It seems it is a matter of outmost
importance to establish who has taken advantage of these mechanisms, who
conform the power groups and their relations to banking, insurance, and
financial markets. We will get to them, let no one doubt that.
This is really the core of the
battle, let us not fool ourselves, this is the core of the national battle:
today the bourgeoisie is still searching for different ways of maintaining the
control of oil revenues. If 70% of our gross internal product still corresponds
to the local bourgeoisie, this means that our economic dynamics is still far
from socialism… too far compañeros,
comrades, compatriots, People listening, it is no coincidence that our
parasitic and importing bourgeoisie is mainly devoted to commerce, because this
allows it to quickly and easily get a hold of oil revenues, and that is how
they are bleeding the country, this is “cavidismo.” The Venezuela as super
power that was the dream, the project that our Comandante worked for, is fundamentally antagonistic with the
expansion of consumption as a function of the interests of the parasitic
bourgeoisie.
Dear Deputies, we need to
consolidate a revolutionary solidarity so that we can act without delay against
all kinds of corrupts that are bleeding the Fatherland. If we want to be at the
level of the circumstances we need to bring bag “Chávez’s whip” to punish
corruption and inefficiency, to reduce impunity until we defeat it and it
disappears. We need, as Bolivar himself knew, to triumph in the path of
Revolution, there is no other way, a war without mercy against all these
burdens that have become a tremendous threat to the Republic and to the
survival of the Bolivarian Revolution itself.
I have not come here to ask to
the right [the opposition] for a truce, that right that has no national consciousness.
But let the decent and honest people of our Fatherland know, that the
anti-national right is betting every second on my failure, on our failure, so
that they can definitely get hold of the rich oil revenues of our country, so
they can then hand them to the transnational interests. They have and will put
obstacle to everything we do.
They are not even capable, with
a minimum of rationality, to open themselves to dialogue, so that they can
listen to the national clamor that Nicolas Maduro must be allowed to govern,
according to the Constitutions, without sabotaging him, without war. Cease now
the war and the sabotage against the democratic government that I preside!
Enough is enough! The People of Venezuela say enough! Until when will we have
to put up with sabotage! With dirty wars! Psychological wars!Hate wars!
