TRIBUNA POPULAR – A new increase in the aggressions against the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) has been launched in recent weeks with the aim of taking over the political leadership of the organization by assault.
On 4 February, the first vice-president of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, orchestrated an unsuccessful set-up to project a false support of the PCV for the anti-worker and anti-popular policies of the national government before the public opinion. To this end, the PSUV leadership disguised officials belonging to its organization in clothing that simulated the symbols of the PCV, and presented them as supposed communist party members.
This maneuver is not an isolated incident. During 2022 and particularly during the preparatory process for the 16th National Congress of the PCV, Cabello repeatedly assured on his television program that the «rank and file» of the Red Rooster party were sending him supposed letters in which they announced that they would «rebel» against the national communist leadership.
However, the PCV’s congressional process was successfully concluded in November; Venezuelan communists ratified their rupture with the government of Nicolás Maduro, and the announced rebellion never happened. On the contrary, 2023 began with important street actions to demand decent wages, and the militancy of the PCV has been present there, in accordance with the line of action approved the previous year.
In view of the fact that the political and ideological unity of the Venezuelan workers’ vanguard has not been broken, the PSUV leadership moved into a new phase, aimed at seizing the acronym and legal figurehead of the PCV: on 11th February, in a luxurious hotel in Maturin (Monagas state), a handful of political mercenaries with no links to the grassroots of the PCV claimed that they were the group promoting the «rescue» of the communist organization at a press conference.
Who are the mercenaries?
The main participants in this set-up have already been fully identified. Among them is Carlos Fermín, currently an official of the National Electoral Council (CNE) in Zamora municipality of Monagas state, who emigrated from Venezuela several years ago and recently returned to promote the creation of a right-wing political movement called Proyecto Reconstrucción Nacional (National Reconstruction Project).
Also participating was Griseldis Herrera, also a CNE official currently on secondment as a legal consultant in the Governor’s Office of Monagas, who was responsible for organizing the fraudulent meeting, broadcasted on the government’s Venezolana de Televisión channel, in which PSUV militants claimed to be the «PCV grassroots».
Another of the fraudsters is Eduardo Herrera, who was director of administration of the mayor’s office of the Zamora municipality in Monagas state during the administration of Raúl Brazón, until he immigrated to Brazil, where he remained until the end of 2022. Several PSUV militants were also part of the masquerade, among them Johan Coraspe, a member of the ruling party since its founding, and Zoilo Aróstegui, who was the driver of former mayor Brazón; Marco Cova, who has been a militant of the social democratic party Podemos for several years, was also there.
On the same day as the supposed assembly in the Maturín hotel, Diosdado Cabello was also visiting the city to swear in the regional leadership of the PSUV, which includes former mayor Brazón as Political Director of the ruling party in the region.
But Monagas is not the only place where the government’s farce against the PCV has been staged. The Regional Committee of the PCV in Miranda state denounced another similar maneuver against the Red Rooster’s party, consisting in this case of the presentation during a radio interview of a certain Carlos Figueroa, a citizen resident in Ocumare del Tuy, as the «political coordinator» of the PCV in that state. It should be noted that this figure does not even exist in the statutes of the PCV.
In a recent press statement on the matter, Yul Jabour, member of the Political Bureau of the PCV’s Central Committee, not only unmasked these parodies, but also clarified once again the position that this party has taken with regards to the current government and the PSUV leadership. «The Venezuelan people know very well which side we communists are on; the PCV is on the side of the teachers who are today carrying out a new day of mobilization for decent wages; the Communist Party of Venezuela is with the civil servants whose income has been pulverized by the regressive economic policy of the government; the PCV is fighting against the package that the Maduro government is imposing to throw the weight of the crisis and the imperialist sanctions on the shoulders of the working people,” Jabour affirmed.
Tribuna Popular 