Venezuela Updates | Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela |Axisoflogic.com

January 28, 2016

Venezuelan National Assembly to Investigate Expropriated Land, Communes Threatened

by Lucas Koerner

After passing a motion by majority vote on Tuesday, Venezuela’s National Assembly will launch an inquiry into the expropriations of privately owned land and enterprises spearheaded by the socialist government in past years.

The country’s newly elected parliament, dominated by the right-wing opposition, has vowed to reverse the socialist government’s social and economic policies, which included the breakup of large private firms and landholdings deemed unproductive and their transfer to state, worker, or communal control.

According to the legislative body’s Finance Commission, the investigation will extend to expropriated plantations, enterprises, and agro-industries with aim of “comparing the levels of production before and after expropriation”.

A key target of the parliamentary audit is the state agricultural enterprise Agropatria, which was created following the expropriation of the Spanish agricultural firm Agroisleña.

As the main provider of credits to small farmers, Agropatria has nonetheless been criticized for its failure to promote large-scale agricultural production in the oil-rich country, which has imported the majority of its food items for decades.

State expropriations have also turned over of large tracks of privately-owned land to small farmers and communes under Venezuela’s revolutionary land law, which permits the breakup of idle, outsized states and legalizes campesino land occupations.

A principal beneficiary of this policy has been the country’s growing commune movement which fused direct democratic self-governance with enterprise geared towards local and regional consumption.

In an open letter addressed to President Nicolas Maduro, communes from northwestern Lara state have denounced what they view as the Venezuelan opposition’s first step in revoking their land rights.

The communards took aim at the opposition governor of Lara state, Henri Falcon, who recently called for expropriated firms and plantations to be “returned” to their previous owners, while dismissing the new enterprises and communes as unproductive.

The letter went on to condemn the newly formed National Council of Productive Economy, which Maduro stacked with senior government officials, including Falcon, and top business leaders.

“No dialogue is possible with the Venezuelan ‘business’ sector because that sector doesn’t exist here, in its place there is a string of tie-wearing parasites desperate to obtain more preferential dollars to import goods, half of which they sell here at black market prices and the other half they smuggle to Colombia,” the communards wrote.

The Lara communes called for support from the national government, underlining the achievements of their five communal enterprises, including the construction of 205 houses and two schools, gas distribution to three municipalities, as well as the production of nearly 13 million kilos of corn and 400,000 kilos of meat, among other goods.

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January 30, 2016

Venezuelans Protest Privatisation of Social Housing as Parliament Approves in First Discussion

by Rachel Boothroyd Rojas and Jonas Holldack

Venezuelan housing rights groups took to the streets of Caracas on Thursday to reject the political opposition’s plans to privatise social housing.

Since launching its housing "mission" or program in 2012, the Bolivarian government, together with communities, has built more than 1 million homes for some of Venezuela’s poorest families.

But the recently built social housing is now under threat of being sold off, thanks to a motion pledging to privatise the houses introduced by the newly elected opposition-controlled National Assembly early in January.

Dubbed the Law for the Award of Property Deeds to the Beneficiaries of the Venezuelan Great Housing Mission (GMVV), the legislation was approved by parliament in initial discussions on Thursday. It will now go to second discussion where it will likely be passed.

“The majority opposition assembly is defending the rights of the banks, the construction and property lobbies that have been hit hard,” said marcher Kristal V, a member of the Pioneers Movement, to Venezuelanalysis.

“Nobody is going to privatise our right to housing, our right to be a socialist community. Today we are fighting for the right to urban soil,” she added.

The new law follows an opposition win at the country’s National Assembly elections on December 6th last year - when legislators affiliated to the Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) swept a two-thirds majority for the first time in over seventeen years.

The new majority allows opposition legislators to pass national legislation virtually unopposed in parliament and has led to a stand-off between the Bolivarian government and opposition controlled legislature.

On Thursday, protesters took to the streets to lend support to the government against the new legislators. They said the law was a direct attempt to eliminate the hard fought right to public housing in Venezuela.

“The approval of this law would be a huge setback to the advances made by the state to ensure the right to housing,” Juan Carlos R of the Settler’s Movement explained to Venezuelanalysis.

“We poor people do not need a house as a piece of merchandise, we need it to live in! It’s the bourgeoisie that has two or three houses which they buy and sell for business,” he added.

The mastermind behind the law, MUD legislator Julio Borges, has said that the new legislation will give residents the official property titles to the houses, allowing them to sell the state-built homes on the private market.

Until now, GMVV residents have been granted a Deed of Use legal document which gives them the right to the houses for life - but the homes can only be sold under specific circumstances and not on the private market.

The opposition move has been vehemently attacked by Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who has vowed to block the legislation. He told opposition legislators that they would “have to overthrow” him in order to pass the motion in his annual state of union address.

Maduro’s government has promised to build millions more public homes for the approximately 50% of the population that currently lives in makeshift houses in the country’s shantytowns - also known as barrios.

For Borges, however, it’s not the role of legislators “to build houses”.

“My role is to give ideas for people to progress, and to that end we are doing what is correct.”

“There is no explanation why the executive would deny something that is as important to Venezuelan families, such as having the full deeds to the property they live in. Something that will mean that families can progress, inherit and sell these houses if they want to keep progressing,” stated Borges.

But the government and social movements argue that the homes should not have a speculative value, but rather remain as houses destined for families in need.

“They (the opposition) never supported the project of the GMVV, they protested when the state took over urban soil for construction and now their mouths are filled with hypocritical lies about democratising the right to housing. They never built a single home, and now they want to capitalise on this project,” explained Kristal.

For many other marchers on Thursday, the proposed law also leaves a huge question mark hanging over what options will remain for those Venezuelans who rely on the subsidised social housing.

Many fear they will be unable to access the houses once they are floated on the highly speculative and unaffordable private housing market.

“They want to send us back to the hilltops, that’s what they want,” said Ricardo Molina, who echoed several other protesters in describing the law as an attempt to re-gentrify exclusive areas of Caracas where blocks of social housing have been built - to the dismay of many middle class voters.

On Thursday, MUD legislators made no reference to the march, but confirmed that they will move ahead with the planned legislation - despite government and social movement opposition.

If Maduro blocks the law, it will then be passed to Venezuelan Supreme Court judges who will have to decide if it potentially violates the constitution.

But social movements aren’t leaving the future of the housing to chance, and they have pledged to continue resisting the proposed legislation in the streets.

“We will take over all urban land if the opposition nullify the laws,” stated Molina.

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February 2, 2016

Top State Food Functionaries Arrested for Embezzlement

by Rachel Boothroyd Rojas

Three top officials in key Venezuelan state food corporations have been arrested for embezzling millions of bolivars - after it emerged that they had been illegally selling subsidised items to private sector restaurants, bakeries and supermarkets for huge personal profit.

On Sunday night, Interior Minister Gustavo González Lopez revealed that the ex-president of CVAL (Venezuelan Food Corporation), Herbert Aguilar, along with the CVAL administrative director, Barbara Figueroa, and the former president of Abastos Bicentenario, Barbara Gonzalez, will all stand trial for embezzlement and speculation.

The scam was revealed during an investigation led by the National Anti-Corruption Body, which found millions of bolivars in the residences and offices of the accused.

Forty public servants have also been detained in connection with the operation and twelve are still wanted for arrest.

“All of these citizens took advantage of the Bolivarian government’s food security policies, destined to guarantee food consumption for Venezuela’s poorest families. They diverted food from the people to the commercial private networks… which sell these products at speculative prices as part of an economic sabotage,” stated Lopez.

The price between government regulated food items and those sold on the private market is currently at an all time high, thanks to a disastrous combination of falling national revenue, rising inflation and currency devaluation.

Although the government’s food corporations and institutions are designed to protect Venezuelan families from the worst of the economic crisis, state institutions have been hit hard by a phenomenon known as bachaqueo - or the reselling of subsidised items at a higher price on the illegal market, causing scarcity and speculation.

Sunday’s announcement is the first time that bachaqueo has been confirmed in the upper echelons of state institutions, and is one of the government’s most significant arrests since its anti-corruption drive began in 2014.

“There is no other name for them than traitors, they were taking advantage of activities that had been entrusted to them for personal gain,” added Lopez on state television.

Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has called for a thorough investigation to whittle corruption out of state institutions.

“They will fall, one by one,” he stated.

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