- Tim Bowron
from The Spark September 2007
The recent decision by the Venezuelan government of Hugo Chávez not to grant a renewal of the broadcasting licence for the private television station RCTV due to its active support for the attempted right-wing coup of April 2002 has drawn howls of protest from the corporate media as well as from both the Bush and Blair administrations, who claim the decision constitutes a violation of “freedom of expression” and “human rights” by the “totalitarian dictator” Chávez.
In their bid to discredit Chávez and the Bolivarian Revolution and pave the way for yet another coup attempt, the media have been devoting extensive coverage to supposedly “apolitical, spontaneous” protests by students opposed to the closure of RCTV on the streets of Caracas. But who exactly are these students?
As George Ciccariello-Maher reveals in a recent article for the online political newsletter Counterpunch, not only is the new so-called student democracy movement confined to the wealthy suburbs of Eastern Caracas, stronghold of the anti-Chávez opposition, but the current wave of “spontaneous” demonstrations involves only some 2.5 percent of the total number of students in the capital, and is being actively directed from the wings by various shadowy right-wing politicians.
Apparently taking their cue from the recent success of CIA-manufactured “people’s power” revolutions in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan, the Venezuelan opposition clearly sees that having failed to topple Chávez through either the ballot box or military coup d’état, their best hope now lies in a more subtle campaign of destabilisation and disinformation.
Meanwhile, as Ciccariello-Maher points out, the majority of Venezuelan students are being denied the right to even attend universities (both private and public), which are traditionally controlled by the bourgeois elite. This is a major factor behind Chávez´s initiative to set up new alternative educational institutions such as the Bolivarian University, on the site of the former armed forces university in Caracas. This mirrors the situation in the official state apparatus, with Chávez having to rely on the support of the working class inhabitants of the poor barrios organised through the misiones and consejos communales to implement his progressive policies in the face of determined resistance from local governors and state officials.
Increasingly, Venezuela appears to be heading towards a situation of dual power, in which either the workers and peasants will take power for themselves or the Chávez government will fall victim to the forces of the counter-revolution. The initiative currently under way to regroup all the genuinely revolutionary elements of the Bolivarian movement into the new Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) – due to hold its first official meeting on 15 August – will perhaps be decisive in determining the final outcome.
