Vote, What For? / 14ymedio, Jesus Lanz Nelson Fuentes

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and President of the National Assembly of Diosdado Cabello (PSUV)
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, and President of the National Assembly of Diosdado Cabello (PSUV)

The author, a militant Chavista, does not want to validate with his vote the ‘continued destruction’ of his country.

14ymedio bigger14ymedio, Jesus Lanz Nelson Fuentes, Caracas, 6 December 2015 – Indeed, vote, what for? This is the question I ask myself all the time trying to come up with a reason to go out and vote in the Venezuelan parliamentary elections on 6 December, but I don’t find any. I know that many will say this is something you must do and that this is not an attitude that should be taken by a socialist fighter like me. As much as I try to come up with something positive to encourage myself to go out and vote, I cannot find it anywhere. The darkness that emanates from the National Electoral Council (CNE) prevents me from seeing anything positive in its system.

As always, I have been and will be a consistent defender of the socialist utopia and will never change my moral and spiritual principles for an illusion created by professional liars and the government’s obscene propaganda system. I will continue the march towards the Venezuela that I have dreamed of my entire life. I know that I am not alone nor will I walk alone on the path that I have followed since my adolescence. It is the path chosen by my father, who died without seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. Perhaps the same will happen to me, but my life is my own and no one else’s. And as long as I breathe I will continue my fight against this black plague called ”21st-century obscurantism,” run by a mafia gang made up of civilians and military led by Nicolas Maduro and run by Diosdado Cabello.

In my 70 years, I have only gone to vote when that great dreamer who was Hugo Chavez appeared on the scene and made me fall in love with his charisma and his anti-imperialist and socialist declaration and the love I saw that he felt for our people. I was with him until 2008, when his lies began to surface. And yet I voted for him again in 2012 and for Maduro, who gave his face to the farce. All this was very painful for me, but reality hit me in the face. Chavez was just a fraud with a Venezuelan face and a Cuban body. He handed over the country to two tyrants like the Castros. He surrendered to them, they were the ones who took power in Venezuela, power that they still maintain with the consent of Miraflores.

Chavez was an architect of deception and I recognize that I deceived myself. I believe that all those who dream of a socialist utopia were also deceived. But, as the path is made by walking and, as we walk, the dust often rises up and clouds our vision, it is up to us to clear our eyes so that we will not be fooled again.

The upcoming elections are just that: A fraud, as they have been since 1960. The old and new redder-than-red bourgeoisie have united in an evil pact to continue exploiting and deceiving the working class, trying to extract the maximum added value from their battered bodies, using them as merchandise and nothing more. So then, why go out to vote? I, for one, will not. I will not validate with my vote the continued destruction of my country, because it doesn’t matter who the winners are if everything will remain the same or get worse.

Why go out to vote if, for example, states such as Bolívar, Amazonas, Zulia, Apure and Barinas, inhabited by indigenous, mining and agricultural communities, starved and with no futures, are entities where with 10 votes per district they elect one deputy and, taking as a whole all the districts they make up, they elect 35 deputies who decide the nation’s future under a state of siege. In contrast, urban regions need 100,000 votes for every fraudulent district to elect a single deputy.

And in all these remote areas, the majority of voters are people very easy to manage when they are in front of the voting machine. All of them will be under the gaze of a gun and the witnesses of the new covenant, who will surely guide the fingers of the innocent voters as they mark their cards. The same will happen when it comes time to count the votes with the tally sheets and when the ballots are sent to the CNE.

How can one vote in these conditions? Vote for what, if it is already all arranged? Who can believe in the old parties and their obsolete leaders joined together in the MUD (Democratic Unity Roundtable)? Who can believe in Maduro and Diosdado and their stinking party full of leeches who suck the blood of the people and the vultures anxious to put their hands in the national treasury? Who can believe in the military (“revolutionaries, socialists and chavistas”) whose suns, instead of shining in honor, are obscured by dishonor from so many scandals of corruption and drug trafficking in their ranks?

No, I will not fall back into their electoral booby trap. Chavez deceived me and I learned my lesson and it was very painful because I contributed with my vote to this whole disaster that we are suffering. Those who want to do it, it is their right, but all these votes will end up at the CNE counting center entirely under the power of the government. Votes that CNE president Tibisay Lucena will distribute at her discretion so that the actions remain coupled and the exploiters of the working class will continue to sing their song of misery and death.

Not even the so-called independents deserve my vote. First, who is independent in today’s Venezuela? If you pay attention to their names, most are uprooted from the MUD or PSUV (United Socialist Party of Venezuela). Principally those of Marea Socialista (Socialist Tide), who are still tied to the GPP (Great Patriotic Pole) and who, if elected, will surely be a part of the comedy mounted by the MUD and its old friends.