00:00Let's go back to our Caracas studios where we were talking to Bishay Prashad,
00:05the director of the Tricontinal Institute. Hello Bishay, can you hear us now?
00:12Yes, live and direct. Thanks a lot. Live and direct.
00:16That is great. We were so sorry to interrupt you. Of course, Election Day has these things. We are
00:21coming and going from live news. But really, we are here to understand the relevance and the
00:27importance of this day and also of this election that has been widely followed from everywhere in
00:35the world. And I was telling you before, I wanted to start by analyzing the repercussion
00:41this has had abroad and also how part of the opposition has been trying to say that there
00:49could be a fraud here just even before weeks before the election. And an important part of
00:56the international media has picked up on this. So I wanted to ask you, what is your take on this?
01:01Is there a possibility of this? How viable is the electoral system in Venezuela according to your opinion?
01:10Well, you know, I've covered a number of elections in Venezuela and in other parts of the world.
01:18It's always an interesting business when you look at elections and when you follow how these systems
01:24work. Particularly when we move to digital systems, people continue to have doubts about them.
01:33They are scared. They don't have paper ballots. But I must say, from everything I've learned
01:39from what the Venezuelan government, the CNE, the national election system, what they've done
01:46is quite remarkable. They've built a modern election system, looks pretty foolproof.
01:53It's understandable that an opposition would start to manage expectations, to start to say
02:00things like there's going to be fraud. All around the world we hear this at a time of elections.
02:06The reason this is such an important election might have something to do with global affairs,
02:14not to do with Venezuela directly. You know, the United States needs Venezuelan oil to come back
02:22into the international market. Having sanctioned Russia, the Europeans are in dire need of oil.
02:30And that's what the United States was counting upon. There was a Barbados agreement between the
02:36government and the opposition. The idea of the Barbados agreement was that if this election was
02:43fair, the United States would start slowing the sanctions down, Venezuelan oil could go to Europe,
02:50and that would save the Europeans from something that the United States has imposed on that
02:55country. So there's a kind of double process here. On the one side, the United States is
03:02desperate to get Venezuelan oil back on the market. On the other side, the opposition is
03:08desperate to try to win this election and be the ones who deliver the oil to Europe and to deliver,
03:17I think, a surrender to the United States. So this is an election about Venezuela, certainly,
03:24but it's also really about geopolitics matters far away from Maracaibo, from Amazonia, and so on,
03:33matters having to do with the United States and its imposition of a conflict on Europe.
03:39So, clearly, from what you were saying, first, there was no real evidence of these claims that
03:44both international agents and media were claiming regarding these elections. And, of course, another
03:50key aspect has to do with international interference and particularly the role that the US is playing
03:57in all of this. And just minutes ago, US Vice President Kamala Harris issued a post on Social
04:04Network X regarding the Venezuelan elections. What did she say? And what is your read on this?
04:13Well, it's very interesting. The polls in Caracas officially close at 6 p.m. That's when
04:21the polling stations across the country are supposed to lock their doors. Only those within
04:27can vote. Twenty-three minutes after the polls closed in Caracas and in other parts of Venezuela,
04:35Kamala Harris, the vice president of the United States and the presidential candidate from the
04:42Democratic Party for the November election in the United States, released a tweet. Twenty-three
04:47minutes afterwards, the tweet very quickly got over almost 2 million retweets. That means that
04:55a lot of people at least looked at this tweet, paid attention to it. What did she say in it?
05:01On the surface, it's a completely bland statement. She says that, you know, the election has happened.
05:09The United States government is going to watch it carefully. The people of Venezuela have voted.
05:15And then there's a key line in the tweet, which I think people should pay attention to. She writes,
05:22Despite the many challenges, we will continue to work toward a more democratic, etc., etc.
05:29In a way, Kamala Harris seemingly is conceding the fact that the opposition may not have won
05:36this election. Despite the many challenges, we will continue to work. This means that the United
05:43States might be willing to concede the opposition hasn't won, the Barbados agreement should go ahead,
05:50and Venezuelan oil should enter European markets. That's one, I think, pretty generous
05:56reading of Kamala Harris' tweet. But I'd just like to say something about her own bona fides.
06:03Pay attention to the fact that Kamala Harris is now going to be the Democratic Party's nominee
06:10for the president of the United States, but she didn't participate in even one primary election
06:17to win the spot at the head of the Democratic ticket. In other words,
06:21she was parachuted into that role. It's rather odd for Kamala Harris, who was undemocratically
06:28parachuted into the role of being the Democratic candidate for president of the United States,
06:35to now lecture people about democracy. She herself has been a beneficiary of undemocratic means,
06:43and here she is trying to tell the world about democracy. It's so typical
06:48of the hypocritical behavior of politicians in the United States.
06:54So, unfortunately, it seems that this media narrative, also imposed by all of these interests
07:00that you were talking about, really prevents us from thinking, as we would do in any other
07:04election, which are the models of country that are being confronted in this context.
07:09So I would like to get into that discussion, that part of the opposition has been very
07:14skillful to skip. On one hand, the ruling party is betting on economic recovery after the impact
07:20of the so-called sanctions, to relaunching national production and self-sufficiency in
07:27order to reduce the dependency of its economy. But on the other hand, the opposition repeats
07:33ultra-liberal speeches like those being exercised in Argentina with Millet, for example.
07:38How would you describe this difference in production models on what is at stake here in Venezuela?
07:46Well, you know, I was in Venezuela in the 1990s, during the administration of Mr. Pérez. At the
07:54time, Pérez, who was a pretty ordinary social democratic president, had told the Venezuelan
08:00people, I promise not to come to the International Monetary Fund, I promise not to beg them to
08:07provide small amounts of money, and then we sort of surrender our oil to multinational corporations.
08:14But in fact, having returned to power, Mr. Andrés Pérez decided to go to the International Monetary
08:21Fund, surrendered the economy, produced an austerity situation which led to the Caracazo,
08:28and eventually the emergence of Hugo Chávez, whose birthday it is today, and the movement
08:34that won the election in 1998. It's important to reflect on that, because in many ways people like
08:41Leopoldo López, Machado, and, of course, the candidate. I mean, he's a Potemkin candidate.
08:51You know, Mr. Guterres is not really the candidate for the presidency. Behind him is Machado,
08:59who's puppeteering this whole business. But these people want to U-turn Venezuela back to the 1990s,
09:07return to the International Monetary Fund, return to a kind of austerity for the poor,
09:14austerity for the working class, surrender the oil to the big multinational corporations,
09:21and allow the wealthy, the old oligarchy, to take back what they think is their own. That's what
09:27the right, the opposition wants for Venezuela. On the other hand, you have the Bolivarian project,
09:34which has been struggling to break out of the stranglehold of the illegal unilateral sanctions
09:41by the United States, wants to find a way to diversify the economy, trying to utilize the
09:49new rebalancing in the world order, the emergence of China, the emergence of Russia, the help given
09:56by Turkey, and so on, to use this rebalancing to find a way for Venezuela to break out of the
10:03shackles of U.S.-imposed sanctions. That's the clear choice in this election. Either you want
10:09to return, you know, back to the future, to the 1990s with the opposition, or you want to struggle
10:17ahead to try to build a decent society for all the people in Venezuela. There's no third choice
10:23on this ballot, even though there are other candidates. There's no third way. These are the
10:27two ways. You know, whatever criticisms one might have of the situation, this is not the time to
10:35think about those criticisms. Obviously, there's lots of scope for improvement, but we got a pretty
10:41clear choice here. Either you go back to 1995, or you go ahead to 2025. That is clear. And now that
10:50we have the time to really think about Venezuela and what's at stake, commune organization has been
10:55widely highlighted as one of the key aspects to understand the Venezuelan model. Does Venezuela
11:01represent the search for a new type of socialist production? And if so, how do you view it?
11:08Well, very frankly, I think the communes, cooperatives, and so on, play a very major role
11:16in democratizing production for consumption by people. You need to find a way to bring
11:23democracy into the economy. But communes by themselves will not be enough. I mean, once
11:29the revenue starts streaming into Venezuela, it's very important to build the net fixed capital,
11:37to build infrastructure, to build better roads, build bridges, build productive forces in
11:44agriculture, and so on. Very important to go in that road as well. Venezuela needs both the communes
11:51and it needs the bridges and factories. You need both things to have a balanced economy.
11:57And right now the United States government, helped along by the European Union and other
12:03forces, have very skillfully prevented Venezuela from building up its net fixed capital, from
12:10building bridges, from building hospitals, from building industry, and so on. They've skillfully
12:16suffocated this sector of the Venezuelan economy. And now is the point, I think, in a third term
12:24for Mr. Maduro, where emphasis needs to be placed on building the physical plant of Venezuela,
12:31upgrading institutions around the country. This has to be the opposite of what Javier
12:37Millet is doing in Argentina. Mr. Millet, who's locked arms with the opposition in Venezuela,
12:46is destroying the Argentinian economy. He's cannibalizing that economy. You can't live
12:53in a world of cannibalism. You have to provide a world where people are able to democratically
13:00have an economy in which they are breathing and being full human beings. And I think
13:06that's precisely what's on the table for a third term for Mr. Nicolas Maduro.
13:13Thank you, Vijay, for joining us and also for giving us such a good read on what is
13:18really at stake today. Thank you for being here in Venezuela Decides.
Comments