Translated "Avante!"article by Pedro Guerreiro, Member of the Secretariat of the CC and Responsible of the International Department.
The important process of sovereign and democratic progressive changes’ assertion in Venezuela, undertaken with President Hugo Chávez’s election, in 1998, hardly had a truce. Upon the initial blow, the USA, that, for decades, plundered with impunity, the Venezuela resources, and the home parasite oligarchy, appropriated the oil revenue and counted on a strongly dependent economy from the exterior, therefore attempted to destroy the Bolivarian process.
In result of its constant antidemocratic and permanent economic war action, one ought to recall the campaign against the National Constituent Assembly called upon president Hugo Chávez, in 1999, the state coup in 2002, the economic and oil boycott, in 2003, the revocation referendum against Hugo Chávez, in 2004, the coup violence, in the sequence of the presidential elections, in 2013, the parliament orchestration, upon the elections, in 2015, with the purpose of attacking the Bolivarian process and its achievements – including the attempt to destitute the president, paralyse the government action, confront the Constitution and even resort to an exterior intervention – or the current coup violence increase.
In order to achieve and overcome the huge and demanding challenges with which the Bolivarian Revolution was confronted, and carries on confronting , the awareness, mobilization, the people of Venezuela determination and unity, the revolutionary, progressive, democratic and patriotic forces, the civil-military alliance, in the defence of the achievements and the possibility of new and deeper advances, was decisive.
Having self-consciousness of this reality, the calling upon, falsely, for “freedom”, “democracy” and “human rights” – as cynically carried out in so many other destabilization and coups operations, imposing sanctions, blockades and aggressions against peoples and sovereign states - the USA and its European followers shout out threats against Venezuela before the just in the eve of the taking place of the elections for the National Constituent Assembly, proving, after all, the huge disrespect for the sovereignty and independence of Venezuela, the right of its people to decide its future, free from any form of external interference.
At the same time, and upon the indescribable farce and huge hollow, that the so-called “symbolic deliberation” carried out and took place, on July 16 by “ the opposition”, the oligarchy appeals to the increase of the economic boycott, trade, industry and services paralysing, and the increase of terrorist violence, within Venezuela – seeking to hit workers and the population -, at the very same time it announces the intentions of plot fiction “institutions”, always counting on the so-desired “democratic” external interference, coming from the USA and its followers.
It is within this context, the election, by direct, universal and secret vote, for the Constituent National Assembly, on July 30 – called upon by president Nicolas Maduro, in the respect and safeguard for the Venezuelan constitution – assumes a great importance for the defence, continuity and deepening of the Bolivarian revolution, the institutions and democratic achievements, sovereignty and independence, and the solidarity and anti-imperialist position of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.