President Chavez has been outlining expectations to 772 delegates attending the extraordinary congress of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), which opened officially last night in Caracas.
Referring to the Fifth International, which he convoked the day before, Chavez commented that the center of revolutionary and Socialist activity has moved from Europe to Latin America. As previously reported, there has been some resistance to the new Socialist International as expressed by an Ecuadoran leader at end of the international meeting of parties of the left, objecting to the name of the new organization and preferring something completely different.
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During the exchange with delegates there were constant references to Simon Bolivar and how he ended his days alone with a divided country ... Chavez called on the party not to leave Bolivar alone and abandoned today and to push for Socialism.
The Congress, he announced, will continue until April 2010 and finish in time to launch the Fifth International within the framework of the bicentenary celebrations of Venezuela's Independence.
Delegates, Chavez urged, must become cadres of the revolution and to achieve that they must study. Chavez quoted passages from a handbook written by deceased Causa R founder, Alfredo Maneiro about political efficiency and the vanguard. Other pamphlets proposed were: one by Marta Harnecker and Lenin's "The State and the Revolution."
What Chavez said he wanted to see emerging from the congress was a "vanguard of cadres" connected to the main force: workers, peasants and students. The rear-guard includes many of the 7 million who joined the party but not the patrols.
Ministries, public institutions and the national leadership will place themselves at the service of the delegates and any representative interim committee they elect in the course of the next few months. The national directorate will continue to function as such until new structures are in place.
During the session, Chavez called on delegates to become HIS vanguard and help him in the tasks that lay ahead. The President reiterated his intention to bring the capitalist State down and he launched an important attack on what some observers have called the "boli-bourgeoisie" who have become rich through business with the State.
Chavez singled out medical insurance companies making millions providing medical attention to workers in private clinics and accused trade unions of being accomplices in defending the interests of the private sector. The paradox, Chavez pointed out, is that they do not avail of high tech and integral diagnosis centers set up by the government for free.
The President also attacked trade union leaders in Guayana for sabotaging government production targets and claiming benefits such as dividends when the companies have lost money ... the cadres must tackle and attack such counter-revolutionaries union leaders.
A lot of questions for discussion were put forward for debate among delegates, including the "military question" of joining the militia to defend the nation.
Patrick J. O'Donoghue
news.editor@vheadline.com
