Vijay Prashad | “What they’ve done is quite remarkable”
The Director of Tricontinental Institute for Social Research, Vijay Prashad speaks of what the Venezuelan administrations of Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro have built in the last 25 years, and what is at stake with this election. teleSUR
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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.