Venezuela
By Ryan Mallett-Outtrim, Merida
April 16, 2013 -- Green Left Weekly -- The room erupted into cheers when the election result was announced. For hours, the city of Merida's most ardent supporters of socialist presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro had gathered in the local offices of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV). However, after a few moments, the closeness of the numbers sank in.
At the time of writing, the National Electoral Council (CNE) had announced that with 99% of votes counted, the PSUV's Maduro won with 50.6%. His closest rival, Henrique Capriles, received 49.1%; giving Maduro a slim 1.5% victory.
In the last presidential elections, Maduro's predecessor Hugo Chavez defeated Capriles – the candidate of the US-backed right wing hostile to the Chavez-led Boliviaran revolution -- by just over 10%,. Many supporters of the revolution were expecting a similar result.
Last month, a joint Barclays/Datanalisis report gave Maduro a 14.4% lead, while pollster Hinterlaces predicted his victory would be 18%.
Nicolas Maduro drove a bus to the National Electoral Council to register his candidacy for president.
By Luis Hernández Navarro, translated by Ewan Robertson for Venezuelanalysis.com
March 29, 2013 -- La Jornada -- Nicolas Maduro is a robust, burly man, 1.9 metres tall with a thick black moustache. He drove a metro bus in Caracas for seven years, was foreign minister for six more and is now interim president and candidate for the country’s top office. He is part of the a generation of Latin American leaders like metal worker Lula da Silva and coco-leaf unionist Evo Morales, who entered politics from the trenches of opposition social struggles [translator: in opposition to the neoliberal administrations that governed Latin America before the continent’s "pink tide", which began in the late 1990s].
"We are all Chavez"
By Tamara Pearson, Merida
March 27, 2013 -- Venezuelanalysis.com -- Although the results of the presidential elections on April 14, 2013, are quite predictable, Venezuela is are going through a fragile, vulnerable period, with a future that is less predictable. These elections, because of their place in history -- the start of the era of the Bolivarian revolution without Hugo Chavez – have some special characteristics and factors. The significance of these factors, of these weaknesses, opportunities, relationships of power, and so on, goes beyond the voting on April 14.
March 15, 2013 -- Irish Left Review -- The following questions [in bold] and answers took place after a talk SYRIZA leader Alexis Tsipras gave to SYRIZA’s London branch in Friend’s House in Euston on March 15. The speech itself can be found here. Some of the questions have been condensed to remove lengthy preambles and/or tangents but they remain an accurate reflection of the query posed by the audience member.
Could you give us a few reflections on what we can learn from the left in Latin America and particularly the legacy of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela?
March 6, 2013 -- Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Venezuela's revolutionary leader Hugo Chavez has died. The Venezuelan people will face the enormous challenge of continuing their socialist revolution without unifying and mobilising figure of Chavez, who has been at the forefront of deepening and extending its radical course.
Green Left Weekly's Ryan Mallett-Outtrim, reported from Venezuela:
Venezuelan media today announced that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has died.
At approximately 5.30pm local time on March 5, Vice-President Nicolas Maduro addressed the nation, stating that after nearly three months of treatment in Cuba and Venezuela, Chavez passed away in the Dr. Carlos Arvelo military hospital in Caracas.
“Those who die for life, can’t be called dead”, he stated, after announcing that the president has lost his two year battle with cancer.
Above: March 6 press conference by Jean-Luc Mélenchon (Front de Gauche, Left Front) on the death of Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez Frias.
l’Humanité interview with Jean-Luc Mélenchon, spokesperson Front de Gauche (Left Front), France, translated by Dick Nichols
March 7, 2013 -- You have always supported the revolutionary process in the Venezuela, why?
We need to place the Bolivarian Revolution in its continental and historical context. The collapse of state communism was presented to the whole world as the end of history for communist and socialist sentiment and aspiration. But the flame flared up again in South America because the new age of capitalism had made that continent its proving ground. Neoliberalism was tried out there by military dictatorships on the one hand and by Operation Condor and CIA acts of violence on the other. The policies which then got applied were the same everywhere: free and unbridled competition, monetarism and deregulation, leading the whole continent to disaster. It is in this context that the revolutionary flame flared up again. Bolivarian Venezuela has occupied a special place: not only has been it been built on democratic foundations, but it has outmaneuvered the criminal plans of the opponent by peaceful and popular action.