…Madurito, the president who undoubtedly had the toughest first year of government ever, and who is closing out the year on a high note nonetheless:
2014 will be “a year of more socialist revolution, of the people, of real democracy,” said Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro during the handover of 40 homes in the Cacique Caribe subdivision of Catia La Mar, in Vargas State, where he ratified the commitment of his government in conducting a constant battle to preserve the legacy of the Supreme Comandante, Hugo Chávez.
He reiterated that one of the first tasks of the year 2014 will be the return of the Efficient Street Government sessions, which will be intensified during the first trimester of the year, when he will hand over the final group of homes to families displaced by the rains of 2010.
“We will go ahead with the seven objectives of the Street Government. With recharged batteries, recharged with love, hope and the absolute faith in the energy of a people determined to be free,” said the head of state, who was accompanied by the National Assembly president, Diosdado Cabello; by the First Combatant, Cilia Flores; and the state governor, Jorge Luis García Carneiro.
Translation mine.
It’s been a rough year for Venezuelans, losing their beloved president and then having to go through two more elections to secure the Revolution. But they’ve pulled through in spite of all the machinations of the opposition and its gringo puppetmasters, even picking off opposition votes in many areas. It’s no small feat, and it’s nice to see that Madurito is not only continuing in his predecessor’s footsteps, but expanding the work he did to include everyone. This is what participatory democracy looks like.
Nice, too, to see loyal Bolivarian fighters like Diosdado Cabello, who was Chavecito’s vice-president during the coup of ’02, who gave the army its orders to return Chavecito to Miraflores, and who presides over the National Assembly now, while General García Carneiro — another counter-coup hero — is the governor of Vargas, working boots-to-the-ground to make sure the displaced flood victims of that state get new homes. They help to provide revolutionary continuity, and their track record is proven.
As is that of Madurito himself, who we know has been a politician almost literally all his life, as well as a union leader and an early civilian supporter of Chavecito when the latter was imprisoned after his failed uprising in 1992. Madurito, in fact, rallied leftists and unionists behind the uprising…and was there for Chavecito when the latter first took up the task of canvassing the entire land, setting a pattern of street-level participatory politics that Madurito is carrying on today, with his Street Government sessions.
The people of Venezuela may have lost their Supreme Comandante to cancer, but they have not lost his ideas…or the will to carry them forward. And they certainly haven’t lost the unity he inspired.
So much for the literally outlandish idea that the Bolivarian Revolution is just a one-man affair.
