As has happened in recent weeks with Acción Democrática, Primero Justicia and Voluntad Popular, the major parties that support the majority of the Venezuelan opposition, the Tupamaro Movement, a traditional ally of Chavismo, has just suffered a judicial attack. The Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), controlled by Chavismo, intervened its leadership and appointed new chiefs who will be able to use their symbols and cards in the disputed parliamentary elections on December 6. The alliance of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the formation of the government, makes waters with the demarcation of its members.
Tupamaro was an organization of urban guerrillas that in 2004 was legalized as a party. It has gained a presence in various legislatures and governorships and even within the cabinet of Nicolás Maduro, whose Minister of Transportation, Hipólito Abreu, belongs to the movement. The ruling of the Supreme Court of Justice now separates them. “Today the theft of the party has been consummated. Our organization, which has been built for more than 30 years, arose from a proposal in the San Carlos Barracks [when Hugo Chávez was imprisoned for the failed coup of 1992] ”, denounced Ares Di Fazio, national secretary of the organization and current deputy in Parliament. “No one is going to tell us what direction we are going to follow. We are not going to allow any type of authority to be imposed on us that has not emerged from within the organization, ”he added. The militants announced street demonstrations to protest the party's intervention.
# 18Aug | Pronouncement of #TUPAMARO before the consummation of the assault of our Red and Black Organization by powerful economic factors disguised as revolutionaries. Enough of attacks against left-wing parties and popular movements. # RespetoALaAutonomiaDeTupamaro pic.twitter.com/4xgnFAAIlL
- Tupamaro Venezuela (@Venezuela_MRT) August 19, 2020A rebellion at the base of Chavismo shakes the reduced political support of Nicolás Maduro. This week the registration of candidacies for the parliamentary elections is being carried out and, within the framework of this distribution of the quotas of positions, these fractures have occurred. The intervention of the Supreme Court in the Tupamaro Movement has added more gasoline to the fire. Organizations that make up the Gran Polo Patriótico, an alliance of parties related to the Bolivarian project with which Chavismo has run as a bloc in elections in the last decade, have expressed their rejection. "Faced with complaints of reusing the Supreme Court of Justice to impose accommodative and illegitimate directions, we demand respect for the development and democratic exercise of the organic life of the parties," said Óscar Figuera, general secretary of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV), that this week he also denounced harassment by intelligence service officials at one of its headquarters in Puerto Cabello, in the west of the country.
In June 2019, the PCV broke its pact with the PSUV considering that Maduro was applying liberal reforms. But now he has made a separate store in the Popular Revolutionary Alternative with which he will present candidates to the legislature outside the government alliance. This new formation, announced last week, is supported by eight other organizations, including the Izquierda Unida parties, a fraction of Patria Para Todos and MBR 200, which for the first time demarcate from the Great Patriotic Pole and present themselves as “a a new benchmark for the left ”in the country.
The pandemic has hit Chavismo with dozens of infected leaders and the death of Darío Vivas, head of the Government of Caracas. Maduro has tried to maneuver to maintain unity in the face of elections that already come with original flaws. The international community has rejected the establishment of the arbitrator through the Supreme Court, which has also modified the rules, even suppressing the direct vote of indigenous people. The European Union recently noted that there are no conditions for reliable elections, which is why the opposition had already announced that it will not participate.
Despite everything, Maduro has continued with the process with which he aspires to regain control of the Legislative Power, a stone in his shoe in the last five years. Still convalescing from covid-19, the number two of Chavismo, Diosdado Cabello, president of the National Constituent Assembly and PSUV helmsman, intervened by telephone at a party meeting to urge the unity of the Chavista organizations. “I call for perfect unity, for unity among the Great Patriotic Pole, which is structured to withstand the onslaught of anyone. We are obliged to stick together, ”he said. This week he insisted again.
Paradoxically, the safest support that Maduro seems to have at this time, in addition to the PSUV, is in the minority opposition parties integrated in the so-called National Dialogue Table, the pact that was forged last year while the negotiations in Norway were shipwrecked with representatives of Guaidó. Under this agreement, the new electoral authorities were appointed, violating the process that the National Assembly must do, and members of that coalition ended up staying with the opposition parties intervened by the Judiciary.
Guaidó seeks to rearm the opposition
The opposition tries to get out of inaction and offer a plan beyond abstention in the parliamentary elections. On Wednesday, Juan Guaidó, head of Parliament and interim president recognized by 50 countries, made a call to define a roadmap for the December electoral event and finally push a political transition that allows presidential and parliamentary elections to be held with guarantees. A recording that he posted on his social networks, he mentioned with name and surname the leaderships of the entire opposition spectrum: Antonio Ledezma, Henrique Capriles, Henry Ramos Allup, María Corina Machado, Andrés Velasquez, Roberto Enríquez, Leopoldo López, Manuel Rosales and Delsa Solórzano , and asked them to join a common three-step strategy. The first would be to accompany the abstention in the December elections and “denounce, reject and ignore parliamentary fraud.” Then he spoke of convening a popular consultation, although he did not specify on what, and thirdly, he proposed activating a national mobilization agenda and international. He put a deadline. He spoke of joining ranks around the plan in the next 10 days. However, the new agenda of Guaidó, after a year of ups and downs to force the departure of Nicolás Maduro, must climb the slope of the erosion of his own leadership and also that of citizen despair amid the worsening of the social and economic crisis due to the pandemic, which seem to have brought the Venezuelan conflict to a dead end.