Maduro's pincer – liquidation of rights and repression
From the Editorial Board of Tribuna Popular
Without legitimacy and with notorious rejection by large sectors of the population, Nicolás Maduro is trying to get out of the swamp in which he finds himself by applying a pincer policy against the popular sectors: on the one hand, he liquidates constitutional rights and, on the other hand, he represses those who raise their voices. This is how this pincer is constricting, with the objective of forcibly wrenching the recognition of his supposed electoral victory; of which to this day there is no official proof whatsoever.
Maduro's pincer is suffocating working families with salaries and pensions frozen for the last three years; with the excessive increase in public service rates and the dismantling of public education and health. His excuse is the sanctions, but the truth is that the leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) governs for restricted local economic groups and transnational capital. Maduro is willing to auction off the country in exchange for recognition, even if this implies the destruction of the living conditions of the working class.
The cynics who with malice aforethought defended the policy of wage destruction during the last few years, under the argument that the country was blocked off and therefore there were no material conditions to comply with the Constitution, are silent today when international agencies announce that Venezuela has around one million barrels of oil per day. They celebrate in Miraflores, Chevron celebrates, the parasitic bourgeoisie that lives off the theft of the oil income celebrates… In short, the powerful celebrate; but not the working people. The people sigh because the national currency is devalued daily and their higher incomes do not allow them to visit the supermarket, much less to the doctor.
The consequences of this policy is the massive exodus of compatriots who risk their lives outside our borders to sell their labor force in better conditions. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans have been pushed into an abyss where they have no social or legal security because they are seen as “illegal.”
The other end of Maduro's pincer is repression. The systematic violation of political, civil and human rights is presented by propaganda laboratories as “anti-fascism” and thousands of workers, students and political and social activists are presented as “terrorists”. However, the true face of terror in Venezuela is that of the leadership of the Government-PSUV, which criminalizes anyone who interferes with its plans to illegally perpetuate itself in power.
The arbitrary detention of thousands of Venezuelans who were kidnapped after July 28 in their homes, when leaving work or during peaceful protests, and today remain imprisoned in subhuman conditions, is the clearest proof of the ruling elite's policy of terror.
The death of young Yorman David León, illegally imprisoned in the context of the post-election demonstrations and recently released from Tocorón in a serious state of health, reminds us of the dungeons of Gomezism, where political prisoners were released ─after torture and hardship─ to finally die. Venezuela has stepped back a century in terms of democratic freedoms and human rights.