Tribuna Popular – The National Electoral Council (CNE) has revealed the ballot for the presidential elections of next July 28. The face of Nicolás Maduro appears on 13 different tickets, that is, one third of those admitted by the electoral body during a process plagued with irregularities and violations to the Constitution and electoral laws.
Although this number of endorsements could be seen as a sign of very broad unity among leftist political organizations, the truth is that the way in which the leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) has forged this “alliance” has been based on the judicial intervention of the political parties that historically supported the process of change in Venezuela, to impose ad hoc directives servile to their interests.
The latest case of this anti-democratic offensive was the judicial assault against the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), perpetrated in August 2023: the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ) took away the legal figurehead of the legitimate communist membership to hand it over to a handful of political operators of the PSUV who have not hesitated to hide their commitments with high ranking officials of the Government party such as Diosdado Cabello or Freddy Bernal.
The theft of the PCV’s ticket has been pointed out by lawyers in Venezuela and different parts of the world as “an inexcusable mistake” on the part of the Judiciary:
“The magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice incurred in an inexcusable error of law by admitting and deciding a writ of amparo, promoted in an extemporaneous manner by a group of citizens who do not militate in our ranks and, therefore, do not have any legal qualification to act on behalf of the PCV”, explained Yul Jabour, who is part of the team of lawyers of the PCV.
The jurist recalled that in December 2023, the legitimate leadership of the PCV went to the TSJ to request the revocation of the invalid sentence, alleging that such ruling violated “norms of eminent constitutional public order that cannot be ignored or disregarded by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice”.
Two months later, in February of this year, the Judiciary responded to the writ: it declared it “inadmissible in law”; a decision that led the PCV last month to file a request for a pre-trial of merit against the judges of the Constitutional Chamber “for having incurred in violations to the Constitution, the laws and its own jurisprudence by refusing to revoke sentence No. 1,160”.
So far, Jabour reports, there has been no response from the TSJ. In fact, the defense of the PCV has not even received the certified copy of the sentence that left the oldest political organization of the country without its electoral ticket.
The revolutionary left without a candidacy
“The dispossession of our legal personality has not only had repercussions in the internal life of the party, but also in the political life of the country”, Jabour specified.
“At this moment, besides the communists, an important sector of the revolutionary left does not have an electoral option for the presidential elections”, added the leader.
For Jabour, the maneuvers of the Maduro government against the communists make evident the “paradox of the so-called progressive governments: they present themselves as supposed bastions of anti-imperialism, but persecute and outlaw revolutionary organizations like ours”.
Various expressions of the popular and revolutionary movement have also denounced that the CNE prevented them from presenting their proposals for new organizations for political purposes, despite having complied with the legal requirements. However, the Electoral Power did allow the creation of new parties with a common denominator: either they are satellites of the Government-PSUV, as is the case of “Futuro” (promoted by the governor of Miranda state, Héctor Rodríguez) or they are organizations created by opponents who participated in violent actions and today have been redeemed by the CNE, as for example, Daniel Ceballos, protagonist of the street protests of 2014.
Jabour informed that the PCV “has continued exploring and promoting exchanges with political, social and popular organizations on the electoral scenario” and that in the month of June the third and last phase of the XVI National Conference will meet to define what position the PCV will adopt next July 28.
“For the time being, it is clear that we communists do not support Maduro; but neither do we support actors that have requested foreign intervention against our country”, he added.
Regarding the PCV’s ticket, Jabour affirmed that “the struggle to recover our political rights will not cease, nor will our support to the struggles of the people for the restitution of those conquests taken away from us”.
Tribuna Popular 