Jaua: Capriles will travel to meet the international ultra-right wing

The Minister for the Communes, Elias Jaua, claims that the Governor of Miranda and opposition Henrique Capriles will travel this month to Spain and to Miami in order “receive instructions and financial oxygen to continue the destabilization campaign against Venezuela’s democracy.”

Jaua mentioned Roger Noriega as one of the “ultra-rightists” Capriles will meet during his trip.

“It’s a lie that Capriles is one of the more moderates of the opposition,” said the Minister, “he is part of the game being played to interrupt democracy, part of the plan of destabilization against our Fatherland.”

Jaua is especially concerned that Capriles could be using Miranda State’s public resources to finance his travels and conspiracies against the government: “We have decided, the National Government, the Parliament, the Regional Parliament [of Miranda], the regional deputies, the city mayors of Miranda, and the Popular Power, to begin a process of debate on the use of resources that have been constitutionally transferred to the State of Miranda, and we will ask Carpiles for an explanations of his travels,” warned he, and added, “we will battle to stop Capriles from using his post of Governor to further his personal interests and his ambition and obsession to become the president.”

(The Agencia Venezolana de Noticias exceptionally publishes images of opposition leaders to illustrate negative comments. This is a rare case of an image of Capriles taken from AVN.) 

We know the motives, therefore we know who murdered Robert Serra

President Maduro has announced that the “intellectual authors” behind the murder of PSUV leader Robert Serra have been discovered. He gave no names, but said that if “we [the government] want peace we have to discover these criminal terrorists and go after de Right every day.”

“We already know who directed and gave the order to murder our dear martyr Robert Serra, the Venezuelan youth is not afraid of terrorism,” assured Marduro to a crowd of followers.

The president said that new evidence was popping up every day, but that he had already explained the three main reasons for the crime: “The first was to kill a young leader, [the second] was to frighten the youth, and the third is that this murder was part of a series of events to plunge our country into violence and chaos.”

(Image El Universa)

Contradictions and missing links in the Serra case

Police investigations in the Robert Serra case point to robbery or the revenge of a disgruntled bodyguard, but president Maduro has been insisting on his conspiracy explanation of the crime.

After several announcements by the president that he would present the evidence of the conspiracy, yesterday he showed a video taken by security cameras the night of the crime. Six men can be seen walking into Serra’s residence. Maduro said all have been identified. One of them is Torres Camacho, Serra’s main body guard. Another man named Leive Padilla, alias “El Colombiano”, was identified by Maduro as a “known Colombian paramilitary.”

Maduro then explained that, despite “national and international versions that were prepared before the crime and that seek to undermine the investigations,” this was a “terrorist act” with the aim of destabilizing the country. Next week, he said, he will present to the United States government evidence linking the crime to “terrorist groups” based in Miami.

Maduro also showed a different video suggesting links between Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Lorent Saleh, Carlos Berrizbetia, and Leopoldo López. All of them presented in the video as responsible for the opposition protests early this year, the murder of Robert Serra, and also the murder of chavista leader Eliécer Otaiza.

On this last case Maduro repeated his argument that Otaiza was murdered by the conspirators but that the police has still to find the missing link in the case: “we are searching for the key piece in Otaiza’s case, let’s hope it exists,” he added.

Maduro made several other revelations: unknown to public opinion the president of the National Assembly suffered an assassination attempt on October 4. The Minister of Education Héctor Rodríguez was also the target of an attempt on October 1. Maduro gave no further details or evidence of these claims, but he said they constituted part of a series of “continued coups” defeated by the government. He also assured that the murder of Robert Serra has “awakened that humanist consciousness of all of the Venezuelan people.”

However, also yesterday, National Assembly member and leader of the PSUV Freddy Bernal seemed to contradict Maduro’s version, and his own previous declarations, and stated that the murder of Robert Serra was the result of a “disagreement” with his own bodyguard, who hired a gang of common criminals to plan the assassination.

Video explains the Economic War

The “Red de Defensores y Defensoras de la Seguridad y la Soberanía Alimentaria,” was established by Venezuelan government with the aim of “fighting the scourge of hoarding and speculation.”

The Red has issued a video explaining how the Economic War works. According to the narrator, the Economic War “disappears” (the “Economic War” being the agent) essential products from the market in order to gain more profits and to sabotage the revolutionary government.

The evidence that the problem is not one of controls and lack of production, according to the Red, is that essential products never entirely disappear from shelves; they are only partially “removed” by the war in order to generate dissatisfaction among the population.

It is all part of a “political campaign” to topple the government, explains the video. As part of this campaign business owners “are in a state of rebellion against the Law of Fair Costs and Prices which seeks to regulate the prices of the products that are indispensable for households.”

As a solution the Red proposes a communal economy of “social property businesses, where the worker will be the owner and will enjoy all the benefits, different from the capitalist [property businesses] where profits go to only two or three people.”

(Image Aporrea)

Freddy Bernal: Murder of Serra was an act of terrorism

Former Caracas Mayor and National Assembly representative PSUV insisted on the government’s version that the assassination of Robert Serra was politically motivated and an act of terrorism. He even knows how long it took to plan the murder: exactly two months.

“The murder of Robert Serra was planned for two months. The attackers found the weak points of [Serra’s] security team and that allowed a foreign actor to have access [to him],” declared Bernal.

Serra was murdered with viciousness [saña] and this fact, according to Bernal, constitutes evidence that the crime had the purpose of causing terror: “I am almost sure that the assassination of Robert Serra was a premeditated act to cause terror.”

Bernal also warned that acts like this could happen again in the future and indirectly blamed the opposition for the crime: “I ask the serious opposition that, no matter what our political differences might be, we don’t kill each other.”

He also said that Colombian ex-president Álvaro Uribe is “obsessed with Venezuela” and that he was looking to “generate political links” with the Venezuelan opposition, especially with Leopoldo López and Henrique Capriles.

According to Bernal this “whole lobby” also includes president Obama who is, for his part, obsessed with jailed opposition leader Leopoldo López: “Because Obama has so many problems in the world, he has Leopoldo López in his mind.”

(Image El Universal)