12-10-07, 1:34 pm
A deafening but dissonant chorus sung by rightists, centrists and false leftists is celebrating the result rejecting the Venezuelan constitutional reform by less than one percentage point. Proposed by President Chavez, the reform had already been approved by the Venezuelan parliament. The result was surprising, because – and this nobody denies – the degree of popular support for the Bolivarian Revolution remains high, as does the people's approval of the government.
The new factor, which should not be underestimated, is the effort the enemies of the Revolution were able to apply, their capacity to divert, falsify and deceive, as well as their power to express their ideas. After being defeated many times in ten previous elections, practically decimated in the legislative elections in 2005 and defeated last year with a weak performance in the presidential elections, the opposition caught its breath and reorganized its ranks, recycled its speeches, renewed its message and showed itself once again as an electoral alternative, with pretensions that it could regain power in future elections.
Unfavorable results in the midst of a situation where the class struggle is sharpening and complex political processes are unfolding should neither surprise nor shake up revolutionaries. Nor they should be taken as definitive. These results serve to identify and recognize structural and conjunctural weaknesses of the Revolution, a point of departure for a practical self-criticism wherever it is necessary. As President Chávez has said wisely and with a democratic spirit both things that can't be found in any bourgeois government when he recognized the result of referendum and congratulated the opposition, 'for now' the constitutional reform cannot be made. But it does not mean that the Revolution has been defeated or that the Bolivarian government will give up its struggle for the desired aims. Events of this type can serve to teach lessons; they can open new roads and improve the path.
As Oscar Figueroa, the General-Secretary of the Communist Party of Venezuela has justifiably affirmed 'one can learn more from a defeat than from a victory.' The leading forces, starting from Comandante Hugo Chávez, the communists, the anti-imperialist and socialist currents that form the immense legion of members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), will know how to calmly extract these lessons, to elaborate the program that fits the challenges of this new phase that is now opening up and assign the tasks that will overcome adversities.
Important in bringing about the unfavorable result on December 2 was international pressure working through the internal opposition to the Bolivarian Revolution. This opposition, in turn, despite its being made up of diverse sectors and institutions – including the Catholic Church, dissidents from government, right-wing parties and organizations, part of the student and labor movements, and which have as their main spokesperson the conservative media – nevertheless succeeded after much time in unifying themselves around a single slogan: vote NO that for one moment has summed up one single goal: defeat the Revolution. The media bombardment spread falsehoods, succeeded in consolidating a backward point of view in the middle-class and neutralized part of the popular support of the Revolution, which, both from electoral fatigue and because of a natural slippage of support for the government in the midst of a delicate economical and social situation, chose to abstain.
The fact is that the Venezuelan government and the forces that support it were unable to sufficiently clarify the issues for the people to unify and mobilize its usual popular base to approve the constitutional reform. This reform is indispensable to deepen and to expand the gains reached up to now, to reinforce the anti-imperialist and popular character of the Revolution and to move towards socialism.
In the face of this unfavorable temporary result, Brazilian communists reinforce their feelings and gestures of solidarity with the fraternal people of Venezuela, the Communist Party, the PSUV and Comandante Chávez. We distance ourselves from the sectors in Brazil that although they are part of the same alliance that supports the government of President Lula, nevertheless dedicate themselves to an inglorious campaign to destabilize the Venezuelan government, and we distance ourselves from others who despite hiding behind a leftist image, in the worst social-democratic style, question the sincerity of President Chávez's democratic conduct.
--Jose Reinaldo Carvalho is secretary of the Communist Party of Brazil's (PCdoB) international relations committee.
