Socialism and Freedom Party
The Socialism and Freedom Party (PSL) addresses the Venezuelan people and the national and international public opinion to set out its position before the call for regional and legislative elections on May 25, 2025.
This electoral process will take place in a context marked by the systematic violation of democratic rights, the disregard of the will of the people and the consolidation of a dictatorial, anti-worker and repressive regime. For these reasons the PSL calls for active abstention and public denunciation of this fraudulent process, and we call to maintain the struggle in the streets for the recovery of political rights, democratic liberties and against the capitalist austerity that hits the working class.
The May 25 elections do not represent a legitimate channel for the expression of the popular will. They are part of the government’s strategy to legitimize the scandalous fraud committed on July 28, 2024, and to turn the page, taking advantage of the ebb of the popular mobilization, to continue applying its capitalist austerity in agreement with Fedecámaras, maintaining the authoritarian control of society as a whole.
In the elections scheduled for May 25, there are no minimum democratic guarantees: more than 300 parties have not had their requests for legalization processed; some 1000 people remain detained for political reasons and another 10,000 under precautionary measures; numerous parties are banned, as is the case of ours, others have been intervened through the National Electoral Council (CNE) or the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ). A former presidential candidate is under arrest, opposition political leaders are persecuted, disqualified or in exile. Meanwhile, the government and its party continue to make discretionary use of State resources and the media.
The precedent of the July 28 fraud
The call for elections is directly overshadowed by the fraud perpetrated in the presidential elections of July 28, 2024, when the government ignored the majority that rejected it at the polls and illegitimately clung to power. This event was not isolated, on the contrary, it was the corollary of a series of fraudulent electoral processes that the government has been executing since 2018, and the culmination of a process to remain in power against all odds, ratifying its dictatorial character. At the service of this objective is the current National Electoral Council (CNE).
The government is applying a brutal capitalist austerity that aggravates the social and economic crisis
The government, in agreement with business sectors, applies a capitalist austerity plan that destroys labor rights, pulverizes salaries and pensions, reduces the social budget, and makes the living conditions of the working people more and more precarious, a situation that is aggravated by the application of the sanctions imposed on Venezuela by the imperialist governments of the United States and the European Union, which we reject. Education and health, together with public services, are collapsing; inflation is hitting the popular sectors and the tax burden is increasingly regressive, while shortages of essential goods persist.
The opposition deepens its crisis and is not an alternative for working people
The bourgeois opposition remains fragmented, incapable of offering a real alternative, fearful of the independent popular mobilization, like the government. Its different sectors in conflict disqualify and attack each other brutally. Some make a direct pact with the government to be allowed to participate in the elections, an example of this is the quick rehabilitation of Capriles and other leaders, while María Corina Machado and Edmundo González continue to wear away, resorting to speeches reminiscent of religious sermons or self-help books, while they continue to bet on intensifying the imperialist sanctions that only affect the working people, generating expectations on some kind of foreign intervention. All of them coincide in their subordination to business interests and imperialism, and those who are participating do not denounce the anti-democratic conditions of the electoral process, they do not mobilize for the political prisoners, they do not speak out for a wage increase, nor do they raise proposals to improve the living conditions of the working majority.
For the unity of action of the left and sectors in struggle
In the face of authoritarianism and austerity it is urgent to build a broad unity of action among the left, the workers and the popular sectors. In this framework the role played by the Forum in Defense of the Rights of the People is important.
Our central task is to confront the government’s austerity measures, to strengthen the struggle for wages and pensions equivalent to the basic food basket, the freedom of all political prisoners and the active defense of democratic freedoms. And to promote the struggle to impose a Workers’ and Popular Emergency Plan that will answer the ills that afflict working people.
From the PSL we reiterate that only with mobilization and popular organization, we can defeat the dictatorial government of Maduro, reestablish democratic freedoms, the rights of the working class and create the conditions for a workers’ government.
Translated from Spanish by Venezuelanvoices.org
Venezuelan Voices 