Venezuela, Moving Forward!US Will Take Action

Speaking to the people of Matera, as Luigi Vannucchi wonderfully plays him in Roberto Rossellini’s movie “Year One,” Alcide de Gasperi says, “It is moral conscience that ultimately decides even social relations.”

The work of a young scholar, Emilio Sposito Contreras, recently highlighted the importance of moral power in the mindsets of Bolivar and behind the current Venezuelan constitutional system. The Venezuelan constitution has translated the importance of overcoming the destructive separation between morality and politics into a specific institutional design. According to constitutionalist Carlo Amirante, from a democratic point of view, the most significant developments such a highly advanced constitution represents indeed relate to moral power, which coincides with the city’s power, electoral power and, above all, the right to remove from office those elected if they do not respect the rules and institutional ethic of their mandate. Of course, painful diatribes on public financing and primary elections are the main expression of a mock democracy.

Furthermore, on an ideal plane, morality and democracy go hand in hand, allowing for popular control of business management and public money from the bottom, which prevents corruption, one of the great plagues of our time that affects a large number of governments and is obviously facilitated by the overwhelming power of private finance.

Characterized by the affirmation of social rights that are translated into practice through the redistribution of income and activities of the Bolivarian missions, the solid Venezuelan constitutional structure, in a way, engages a permanent protagonism of the people, which gives rise to a rich political dimension, both pluralistic and participatory, despite attempts at coups and sabotage by the opposition. No matter how challenging, beyond partisan disputes, a new, bottom-up institutionalization of the people is making way, exemplified by the municipal councils. We are only at the beginning of a journey toward overthrowing the bourgeois democracy and onset of an effective democracy.

The government and people of Venezuela have recently taken important steps on this path. Certainly, no one can underestimate the scale of the recent elections, which recorded yet another affirmation of the United Social Party of Venezuela and Chavez front, nine months since Commander Chavez passed away. President Maduro’s power management has been skillful and shrewd. He has demonstrated being able to worthily fill the difficult role of the commander’s successor. The measures adopted to respond to the economic boycott, enacted without shame by unpatriotic sectors of trade and those against corruption, have given confidence to the people.

Today, more than ever, Venezuela is a place where it is possible and convenient to invest. This is particularly true for small and medium-sized enterprises of value that constitute a good part of the Italian industrial structure and exports. As stated by Venezuelan Minister of Planning Jorge Giordani, who recently visited our country, Venezuela “encourages the growth of small and medium-sized enterprises as regards workers and their environment. We reaffirmed this at this conference: We prefer to facilitate their entry, not that of large, predatory multinationals.”

The Central Intelligence Agency and organizations connected to it have spent rivers of money in vain in an attempt to destabilize the Venezuelan government. This has done nothing. It is about time that U.S. taxpayers energetically protest against this waste — also and especially because, in the United States, there are many other emergencies to deal with on a social and economic level. In the face of the new Latin America, they are destined to fail, except, and only for the time being, in marginal situations, like Honduras — imperial retching aimed at resurrecting a supremacy, which fortunately has definitely faded by now. Obama is taking action and will seize the opportunities that could arise for his people and government from an open, equal and cooperative relationship with the new Latin American democracies.