EDITORIAL | The King is naked: It is necessary to vote to defeat the anti-worker and authoritarian government

The process to elect the new male president of the Republic (there are only men in the race) has vertiginously accelerated the increasingly authoritarian and abusive trend that violates the social and political rights of the Venezuelan people; a feature that ─more so than a tailor-made suit─ has become a second skin of the Government of Nicolás Maduro and the leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
What has also been fabricated ─ and crudely─ in the image of the ruling elite is the electoral calendar. If the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) has become a shameful law firm that is ready to shred the Constitution and the laws, the National Electoral Council (CNE), with Elvis Amoroso at its head -the face of arbitrary political disqualifications-, enjoys a malleability capacity that the most experienced contortionist would envy.
The Legislative Power does not lag behind and advances in the confection of a framework of repression ─which goes from selective to extended─ with the approval of laws whose objective is none other than to neutralize the workers’ and popular struggles for the recovery of the violated rights. To the so-called law «against hatred», used until now to criminalize and prosecute political, trade union and social activists, is added the infamous bill «against fascism» which, among other things, defines classism ─historical characteristic of the workers and trade union movement autonomous from the interests of capital and the bosses─ as an attribute of the fascist monster.
Despite all this, there are those who prefer to look the other way. They do not like the king’s suit, but refuse to confess it. They are afraid of «playing into the hands» of the enemy. Meanwhile, the emperor is on the arm of the enemy, or what are the «secret» meetings of the Government-PSUV with Joe Biden’s administration?
When the king passes by, leaving a trail of liquidated salaries, pulverized benefits and imprisoned workers, there is no lack of those who shout in the cortege «remember the sanctions!» and with this they intend to silence the just claims of the people. Those who refuse to remain silent run the risk of being labeled «terrorists»,»traitors» or «unpatriotic». Meanwhile, the corrupt leadership takes advantage of the «sanctions» to close obscure contracts that fill their pockets and those of the aforementioned enemy.
In a scenario of these characteristics; without an electoral option that expresses the interests of the working people of the city and the countryside, what should be done? In the first place, illusions must be put aside: a change of government will not bring about a policy favorable to the aspirations of the excluded majorities. The recovery of rights is a matter of struggle; not of handouts or «good intentions».
On the question of «for whom to vote», the XVI National Conference of the Communist Party of Venezuela will discuss and define it in an organic and collective way in its third phase; taking into account the exchange with the allied organizations of the popular and revolutionary camp and, of course, knowing that the promoters of calls for foreign intervention are not an option.
At this moment, the immediate task is to defeat the pretensions of the Government-PSUV to install a tyranny disguised as false democracy; to make way for the full exercise of the democratic rights of the people and to push forward the struggles under better conditions. Although the public powers ─who stopped serving the Republic─, have prepared a formidable outfit, the truth is that the king is naked and the people know it: we must vote to defeat the anti-worker and anti-popular policies of Nicolás Maduro.