Blackouts are acts of sabotage

Venezuela is again suffering from a bout of daily electricity blackouts in several regions, including Caracas. As it has done many times before, the government is claiming “the right” is sabotaging the electricity grid and power stations.

President Maduro yesterday accused “elements of the right” of provoking an explosion at a power station in the state of Táchira. “I warned about this a week ago, the battered right [derecho maltrecha] is not in an electoral campaign, it is waging a terrorist campaign, it has an invisible campaign to harm the people,” said Maduro.

Electricity Minister Luis Motta Domínguez seconded Maduro and said “sectors of the right” are to blame for the explosion at the power station: “they are increasing the attack together with a media campaign to discredit the workers of CORPOELEC [public electricity company].” The Minister believes that it is not a coincidence that “blackouts have increased only two months before the [December legislative] elections.”

Sabotage! Beware of the invisible hand of the right warns Maduro

The Venezuelan government is seeing signs of what it calls “right-wing sabotage” in the oil industry and in the public services infrastructure.

President Maduro warned yesterday via twitter (@NicolasMaduro) that the “invisible hand of the right does not stop in its attack against or people. Justice will be made.”

On Friday, June 5, the PSUV governor of Aragua, Tareck El Aissami, announced that a fire at an electric sub-station near La Victoria, had been caused by an act of sabotage on Thursday. The fire caused a blackout in the central region of the country, including parts of Caracas.

Also on Thursday the Attorney General’s office announced that three workers of the oil industry, and five persons unrelated to the industry, had been arrested for an “act of sabotage” against oil installation in Monagas.

Defense against saboteurs according to public television

The National Assembly approved yesterday the “Anti-imperialist Enabling Law for Peace” which grants president Maduro extensive especial powers to rule by decree in matters related to national security and sovereignty.

As part the preparations for the imperial invasion the government has started 10 days of “civic-military exercises” called Bolivarian Shield. According to defense minister Vladimir Padrino López these exercises aim at reinforcing the “civic-military union in defense of the Fatherland in the face of any imperial aggression.”

However the civil and military readiness is necessary, not only against the external imperial aggression, but also against internal apátridas saboteurs. 

Here is a video shown by the public television channel Venezolana de Televisión explaining how to deal with this internal threat. In the closing minute of the video vice-president Jorge Arreaza explains that it “is a clear demonstration of how to protect” the Venezuelan oil industry.

In the first part an actor representing a saboteur gains access to the operation center Paraguaná oil refinery. Fortunately, the operator at the control board “is a patriot,” says the narrator, and quickly calls his superior. The superior confirms there is a sabotage attempt -the suspect seems nervous alterado, says the narrator- and calls security.

Enter the Cuerpo Combatiente de PDVSA, including a rifle armed soldier, two corporate security officers, and a militia member. They “proceeded to take the apátrida, saboteur, into custody.”

The video then turns to “situation number 2.” The narrator tells us that thanks to “social intelligence” the Combat Units (Cuerpos Combatientes) of PDVSA, have received information that a group of people have gathered with “the intention of creating a manifestation.”

A small group of protesters wielding sticks and rocks approach the gate of a PDVSA facility. Members of the National Guard and Militias (not allowed by the Constitution to deal with public order situations) arrive at the scene on motorbikes. However, the situation is fortunately diffused by members of the Cuerpo Combatiente who, according to the narrator, “use dialogue and the debate of ideas” to calm down the protesters “as it is usually done in our Fatherland.”

But the danger is far from over. A tank truck driver “intentionally” provokes an accident with an incoming car with the aim, says the narrator, of “blocking the entrance of the refinery and paralyzing its operation.”

Medical personal arrives at the scene to take the injured car driver. The narrator insists for a second time that the situation is “intentional” and not an accident. Nothing is said in the video of what happens to the saboteur truck driver who is not seen again.

“Situation number 3” is similar to the previous one. A second saboteur truck driver parks his tank truck in front to the entrance and refuses to move. This second driver seems to be an open saboteur because he gets down from his trick and violently proclaim he will not move their truck. The National Guard arrives again and arrests the apátrida truck driver.

The narrator explains that these actions “show the understanding and cohesion of the trilogy government, the people, and the Bolivarian Armed Forces.”

The saboteur’s truck is finally moved and a convoy of tank trucks passes the gate, the drivers waving national and PDVSA flags. The narrator ends by celebrating the triumph of the “anti-imperialist, socialist, and profoundly chavista PDVSA workers.”

They are poisoning our wells

A press note published by the Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias (AVN) informs that “two terrorist actions have marked a new phase of the Venezuelan ultra-right [actions] in the last days: the poisoning of water in Mérida and the burning of two areas of the National Park Waraira Repano [Ávila]”

“The first event happened last Sunday in the water treatment plant of Bourgin, in the State of Mérida, where 100 liters of gasoil were emptied [into the water] endangering the lives of 180,000 inhabitants of the State, which represents 80% of the population. (…) The second terrorist act happened Monday afternoon when two areas of the National Park Waraira Repano were burnt…” explained the note.

The fires in the Ávila produced an energy blackout in northern Caracas which lasted through Monday night. According to the Electric Energy Minister, Jesse Chacón, “the way in which the event occurred leads us to conclude that it was intentional, first of all because the transmission lines that feed Caracas pass through the Waraira Repano.” 

The timing and place of the fires is also evidence of sabotage, according to Chacón: “First we had a fire in El Marqués at 6:00pm and we were able to control it, and then another one in the Cota Mil [Waraira Repano] at night. The fires were in in the two only places [in the park] where there are substations of the National Electric System.”

On the poisoning of Merida’s water supply, Environment Minister, Miguel Leonardo Rodríguez declared: “This was, from any point of view, a premeditated and macabre action. They gained access to the water pipe lines, the ones that are just outside the treatment plant, they perforated these pipes and poured in 100 liters of what we presume was gasoil.”

The AVN press note ends by putting these two events into context:

“These attacks on the waters supply the State of Merida and the National Electric System are part of the assault [arremetida] of terrorist groups that have also vandalized schools, university institutes, tourists infrastructure, and the transport system, all in the context of a destabilizing agenda that aims at generating a coup d’état in the country. As part of these attacks 36 people, civilians and officers of State security forces, have died.”

Two accused of electric sabotage

According to the daily El Universal, two suspects named Joel Coballes and Gustavo Subero, were arrested in Aragua on January 20 and will be charged with “attempt to sabotage the electric system.”

The two were detained near the San Ignacio energy station in possession of a wrench which, according to the police (SEBIN), “could have been used to dismantle an electrical transformer, a lightning rod, and an electric fuse.”

Maduro: Opposition sniper shot down a power line

According to President Maduro the power outage that affected most of Venezuela in early December was a sabotage act by the opposition.

Yesterday, during the ceremonies commemorating the 183 anniversary of the death of Bolívar, Maduro declared that “days before the [December 8] elections [the opposition] took down a transmission line. It has all been proven. With a single shot they blow up a key line and left the country without electricity.”

 

According to El Universal, Justice and Interior Minister Miguel Rodríguez had already last week proposed  the idea that a sniper could be behind the blackout: “I have been thinking on hypothesis: a single shot. A shot fired from 50 meters away by a good sniper, at a cable that is 3 centimeters thick, it’s very easy. It was a clean cut.”

Opposition blamed for latest blackout

A power blackout hit last night most of the country including Caracas, which was left without electricity for more than an hour, form 8:10pm to 9:30pm.

As in the previous massive blackout in September this year, and prior to investigations, the government has been quick to accuse the opposition of sabotaging the electric grid.

President Maduro declared right after the event that he had information that the opposition had planned violent actions to be sparked by the blackout: “I have intelligence information that in three areas of the country guarimbas [violent opposition protests] were being organized. It´s very strange that right after the blackout some people went out to burn tires.” He added that State security agencies have been put in maximum alert in the case of “possible attacks by the Venezuelan right.”

“Our people do not deserve this new sabotage. They don’t deserve this from the fascist right that wants to leave our people without electricity,” complained Maduro.

Electric Energy Minister Jesse Chacón gave details of why the government believes this recent blackout is also an act of sabotage. He declared that an electricity conductor that had become detached from the transmission line 765, could not had done so by natural causes and that therefore the blackout had been “provoked.”

Minister Chacón had claimed in November this year that the National Electric System was now “bulletproof” (blindado) against any attack form “the right”. But he also warned that the opposition would try to sabotage the upcoming municipal elections by “producing” blackouts.

Via twitter, General Attorney Luisa Ortega Díaz (@lortegadiaz), seconded the sabotage accusations made by Maduro and Chacón. She promised a “criminalistics investigation” into the event and wrote: “As Attorney General I will not allow that events against the wellbeing and tranquility of Venezuelans remain unpunished.”  

The Empire is using local union leaders in its economic war

In yesterday’s press conference President Maduro insisted in the main themes of his theory about an “economic war” being waged by the enemies of the Fatherland. The Empire, the “parasitic bourgeoisie”, “the trilogy of evil”, and the leaders of the local business unions FEDECAMARAS and VENAMCHAM, were all mentioned as actors of this war.

Maduro gave a few new details of this vast conspiracy he claims is behind the economic war. He informed that the US embassy officials ordered to leave the country early last month had gone to Bolivar state to “meet several leaders, one of those leaders was to be in charge of the general power blackout, they talked about it just like that, openly. Another leader was to infiltrate SIDOR [state steel industry], and according to our data they had co-opted two union leaders in order to stop it [SIDOR] indefinitely and to leave the country without steel. And yet another [agent] would co-opt people form the opposition and finance them.”

The public “Basic Industries” of the Guayana region have been the source of labor unrest and intermittent strikes since last year.