The PCDC (Citizen Platform in Defence of the Constitution) offered a press conference on Thursday near the UCV, where it declared on several aspects on the national and international political conflict that Venezuela is going through. They rejected “the parallel state promoted by the U.S., the European Union and the Lima Group” and “the sold-out government of Nicolas Maduro”, proposing to carry out a “referendum to renovate the public powers” as a democratic and constituent political solution.
That was said by the spokesperson of the Platform, Oly Millan, followed by Gustavo Marquez. There were answers to the press by Edgardo Lander, Gonzalo Gómez y Héctor Navarro; members of the PCDC, a space for reflection, investigation, elaboration, denouncing and political opinion. They were accompanied by other members of this political organization, like Juan Garcia and Ana Elisa Osorio. The PCDC started almost four years ago, with the participation of social and political fighters, some of those were ministers during the government of Hugo Chavez, other have a prominent academic history, as well as in indigenous, environmental and workers struggles, with representation of the leadership of Marea Socialista.
In the press conference, they described the implications of the international declaration of the Lima Group, constituted by the governments of several Latin American countries working with the government of Donald Trump, that support the attempts of the president of the National Assembly to establish a “parallel” government and State in Venezuela, backed by that group of governments and the U.S., under what they denounced as an “interventionist” operation. They warned of the aggravating effect of the sanctions proposed by the aforementioned organization on the already dramatical situation of the people of the country, which are not softened by the supposed attempt of solving the humanitarian crisis, behind which they see interventionist manoeuvrers and the possible danger of a military escalation to satisfy interests that are completely different from those of the Venezuelan people. In this situation they included the position of this group, supported by the National Assembly, that punished Venezuela for its actions in defence of the sovereignty in its territorial sea of the Orinoco Delta against the incursions of the boats of a transnational oil company from Guyana. But this rejection to the plan of the Lima Group, with Guaido as head of the National Assembly, doesn’t mean that the PCDC supports in any way the government of Maduro, who they describe as “the government that has survived through he application of a state of permanent exception, to avoid and neutralize the control of the National Parliament and facilitate the selling-out the primary exploitation of our natural resources to big transnational corporative capital.”
They also denounced the Maduro administration as the one that “chose to advance with the implementation of an extractivist model, damaging national sovereignty and the social, natural and economic patrimony of the Nation”
As an example, there are “the mines of Orinoco, the PDVSA deals of joined services, that bring us back to the times of the concessions of the Gomez regime, and the operative oil deals of Luis Giusti”, that for the Platform are proof of “the obvious sold-out orientation of a government that is getting more authoritarian and opaque, that keeps power through clientelist political control, repression and police duress, violating human rights with the false flags of the anti-imperialist struggle and the defence of the Bolivarian revolution”.
The PCDC points out that there is an usurpation of the powers in every institution and grave violations of the Constitution, arguing that “the illegitimacy of president Maduro is originated in he rejection of a majority of the Venezuelan people” that according to these critical views, he’s seen as “the main responsible of this crisis” that strikes the people, “of the generalization of poverty, the collapse of public services, the economic paralysis, hyperinflation and the destruction of the social and productive weave of the country, as well as the grave violations of the Constitution, including the systematic violation of human rights”.
They said as well that among the people “there´s a rejection of violence and foreign interference”, and that the way for the restoration of a state of rights and lost institutionalism for that majority is “the peaceful mobilization sustained inconstitutional mechanisms”. For that, they say that they “support every struggle and demand of the Venezuelan workers in defence of their wage, living conditions and work, today deeply affected by the fall of income, the government´s ignoring of collective contracts and other socio-economic conquests”. They think that “those struggles must articulate with the struggle for the restoration of the Constitution”.
In response to a question of the press about the participation in the march in memory of January 23, 1958 (the fall ofthe dictatorship of Perez Jimenez), Gonzalo Gomez responded that some members of the PCDC (that belong to Marea Socialista) are part of the organization that articulates the workers’ struggles under the name of Intersectional of Workers of Venezuela, that is promoting the mobilization but “insists that it should have a totally independent character and conserve its own identity around the demands of the working class” and that “in no way will the workers be part of the march called by Guaido” for that same day. For Gonzalo Gomez, it implies that the mobilization of the Intersectional will have a completely different route as well as its own slogans based on the constituent points of the ITV around the defence of wages, for the collective bargaining, for the living conditions of the working class and the people, against repression and for the democratic rights shared by the rest of the sovereign people, as well as the defense and respect of constitutional rights.
On what to do, the PCDC says that “for the people of Venezuela, the first task is the preservation of the countrybecause, without it, building a national project will not be possible”
On the other side, they call to “reject the thesis that is internationally being proposed by an extremist sector of the opposition that, following the instructions of the U.S. government, talks about a ‘vacuum of power’ and, consequently, the need for foreign intervention”, so they do not ignore the current government but, at the same time, they consider it “illegitimate because it acts outside of the Constitution and its actions are contrary to the general interest”, so they call the people to find a way for this government (of Nicolas Maduro) to be replaced but “not through an unconstitutional coup d’etat backed by the US and its allies, but through the coherent action of popular participation and mobilization in the framework of the constitution”.
With this orientation they propose “that the dispute between the government and the National Assembly must be resolved through dialogue and negotiation, using as a starting point the call for a binding consultative referendum, where the Venezuelan people choose in transparent elections, based on the articles 70 and 71 of the Constitution if we want a renewal of the public powers or not”.
Credito: Aporrea.org / Amanda