Political Developments

The results of the Nov. 23 state-municipal elections dashed the opposition’s hopes that Venezuela has become fed up with President Hugo Chávez. However, it wasn’t all good news for the Chavistas.

A Human Rights Watch report on alleged setbacks in human rights in Venezuela since President Hugo Chávez first took office 10 years ago has been severely questioned by 118 academics from the United States and several other countries.

In an open letter to the Board of Directors of Human Rights Watch, over 100 experts on Latin America criticized the organization's recent report on Venezuela, A Decade Under Chávez: Political Intolerance and Lost Opportunities for Advancing Human Rights in Venezuela, saying that it "does not meet even the most minimal standards of scholarship, impartiality, accuracy, or credibility."

The development of all forms of People's Power and the vivacity of the struggles, should be antidotes against the stagnation of the process and the reconciliation with the exploiter class, which opens dangerous gaps to the recuperation of their original power.

What was the role of gender and women’s issues in the recent regional elections? Venezuelanalysis.com spoke with Professor Alba Carosio, life-long feminist and director of the Women’s Studies Center at the Central University of Venezuela.

The assassination of three labour leaders belonging to the largely pro-PSUV UNT has been analyzed as the spreading of rural political violence to urbanised forms targeting labour leaders and social workers. What has not been discussed is the emotional response of leftists against such crimes.

What do the results of Venezuelan elections mean for the future of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), the rural and urban sectors of the country, the community councils, the right-wing and radical wing within the pro-Chávez camp, and democracy in Venezuela? Venezuelanalysis.com asked Gonzalo Gómez, a leader of the PSUV.

Years of work by U.S. and other non-Venezuelan NGOs to penetrate communities and finance "democracy" programs and projects with an anti-socialist vision in select communities allowed the opposition to retake control of these areas.

Ten years of the same government may have aroused a sense of ‘Chávez fatigue' for some voters. At the same time, democratic developments in society have helped the PSUV maintain its strong support base.

It is not only that many of the daily problems of Venezuelan working people have not been solved. Added to that we have the fact that in many occasions, when workers and the poor take the initiative, through direct action, to solve them in an organised way, they are faced with the demoralising wall of the bureaucracy, inefficiency and corruption.