Get to Know the Neoliberal Plan of the Venezuelan Right-Winger Oposition
The presidential candidate of the Democratic Unitary Platform (PUD), Edmundo González Urrutia, accompanied by the right-winger leader María Corina Machado. Photo: EFE/ Ronald Peña
June 9, 2024 Hour: 2:04 pm
Recently, Edmundo González Urrutia, candidate-poster of the most extremist sector of the opposition, said in an interview that his government program was literally “the same as María Corina Machado”.
Given this unusual revelation, I took EGU at his word and went looking for the Machado plan. I found it online and downloadable as “Presidential candidate’s government program” (?).
And this is what I found.
From the point of view of language, the text is a kind of reiteration of the neoliberal vision of the right in the world. The document entitled “Land of Grace” -which Judith Valencia renames as “land of misfortune”, because it would be a real tragedy if what it says was applied- opens with a trite mixture of notions that are located between “The great turn” of Carlos Andrés Pérez, a class in the IESA and a certain attenuated rhetoric to the Javier Milei. A rant about the apparent benefits of individual freedom, the market economy and meritocracy, as pillars of a transition that-they promise-will be paradise 3.0 on earth.
The reader is initially overwhelmed with a lot of false data about the Venezuelan economy. That is understandable, if we take into account that their main ideologues are Gustavo García and Carlos Blanco, two castaways of the CAP lineage who aspire -from the hand of Machado- to a second chance on earth.
The stench of “oenegé”, of USAID, of gringo thought, breathes through all the pores of the text. Venezuela of 2024 is described as a hell. The famous complex humanitarian crisis: people do not eat, do not live, do not breathe, do not dance or even talk, and so it is necessary to end this model. The idea of “regime change” is the backbone of the MUD’s electoral offer.
But… what does the right propose to do if it reaches the government. Let’s see some pearls.
-Restructure the State and reorganize the government by eliminating ministries (a chainsaw imported from Argentina) and creating a “meritocratic culture” in the public administration. By the way, the public administration would cease to be such and would become, in an EGU-Machado government, a “civil service”. The document admits, without saying so, that the dismissed from the public administration will go on to training programs so that they are integrated into the avalanche of new companies that will be created.
Politically, the MUD promises that the National Assembly “will be legitimized through elections”. They scrape it off, without saying how. What this means is that Machado-EGU does not recognize any legitimacy to the NA elected in 2020, before which will have to be sworn in whoever is elected on July 28. It may be a “lapsus brutus”, perhaps because they still believe there is something called AN 2015.
They announce that they will privatize PDVSA (in all its processes) and state enterprises. This is the discursive heart of the plan. The word “privatization” is the one most mentioned in the document: 11 times. Private management is praised in opposition to the “bureaucracy”, which is supposed to be ugly, corrupt and full of begging Chavistas. It is the return of the most vulgar propaganda of the Washington Consensus. It proposes an idyllic, prosperous and privatized society, which will produce immense wealth, taking care to mention how it will be distributed.
In the same vein, it is proposed to privatize the pension system. The MUD document proposes a new “Chilean package” on social security: individual capitalization and financialization of the pension system giving it to banks. What Caldera wanted to do and Chávez stopped is what Machado and EGU are now announcing.
Without explaining how they will achieve it, the EGU plan announces a rain of private investment, and ensures that they will restructure the public debt without explaining how they will eliminate the blockade and sanctions on debt, oil and foreign trade. They’re announcing a swap of debt for assets, old idea from the ’90s. It is not only that we pay with oil, gold or public assets, but with heritage: the Orinoco, the Amazon rainforest… the Essequibo?
But it is much more-and reveals more deeply the intentions of its editors-what does not say what the right-wing plan says. In the future “Land of Grace”, the people simply do not exist. The word “people” is mentioned only once in the document, and only as a complement to an empty prayer. And if there is no people, there is no reality where the people are realized.
The terms “social justice”, “missions” “social rights” or “communes” are named zero times. Militia shows up once, and it’s to promise to be eliminated. The people, the tumultuous majorities, that uncomfortable actor of history who is repulsed by surnames, do not appear anywhere in the program of the right.
It is hard to believe that a group of Venezuelans who aspire to be a government will be able to write such an absurd document, such a bubble, completely isolated from the national reality. Without recognizing even one of the profound socio-political, cultural and economic transformations that have occurred within Venezuelan society in the last 25 years. It is a program for right-wing extremist voters, not even for the moderate opposition.
Text riddled with lies, false data and unfulfilled promises, but above all, completely oblivious to popular hopes and aspirations, and completely bent to foreign ambitions.
What would they do with missions if they ruled? What would they do with communes?
In the “Land of Grace”, the right reveals itself in full body. Lies and deceit. Plato would say that his lies are true because ignorance (and disconnection from Venezuela) lives genuinely in his soul. It is this deception of the soul, this way of being turned away from history and your country, which leads the opposition to believe that it deceives voters.
Will 28J fool you? I don’t think so.
Autor: ACJ
Fuente: William Castillo