The ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela on Saturday began a six-day congress with Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro seeking to fire up militants and quell dissidents who say he is failing to fix the economy or end graft.
It is the party’s third congress since its formation in 2008, but the first without its charismatic founder, former Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, who died last year of cancer after ruling the South American nation for 14 years.
“This congress will be unforgettable for the future of the fatherland,” Maduro told 537 red-clad delegates at a Caracas theater. “All of us together have to be Chavez, we must not fail ‘the giant’ [Chavez’s nickname] — We are his heirs.”
By sheer force of personality, Chavez held the ruling party’s competing factions together, from Marxist ideologues to military officers and pragmatic businessmen. Yet Maduro, 51, a former bus driver whom Chavez made vice president, has been unable to replicate his predecessor’s political grip and faces a dilemma in preserving “the giant’s” political legacy while rectifying deepening economic problems.
Venezuela has the highest inflation rate on the continent at 62 percent in the 12 months to last month. A Byzantine currency control system, with official rates ranging from 6.3 to 50 bolivars to the US dollar and a black market level of 80, is creating price distortions, stymieing private business and earning huge sums for those playing it.
Shortages of basic goods continue, while electricity and water cuts are angering Venezuelans.
“Working people’s daily life has become a long suffering,” “Chavista” group the Socialist Tide said, lambasting “scandalous” graft and government policy paralysis. “There is confusion and pessimism over the future.”
The frustrations and fissures in government circles came into the open last month when Maduro pushed out former Venezuelan minister of finance and planning Jorge Giordani, a veteran of Chavez’s Bolivarian “revolting,” Marxist academic and architect of the nation’s economic controls.
The party then suspended a director who backed Giordani’s departing criticism of Maduro for failing to stem multibillion-dollar fraud with the currency controls.
Despite that and the grumbling at grassroots level, there was no sign of a revolt at the carefully choreographed party congress.
Veteran Venezuela analyst David Smilde of Tulane University said the government had managed to “domesticate” the high-profile congress, but added that the divisions would not go away.
“They are going to sidestep the difficult questions. Then in August they will do what they have to. What they have in mind is slow change, like turning a big ship,” he said.
Venezuelan Economy Vice President Rafael Ramirez has said that the three currency control levels will likely be unified.
That would effectively bring a devaluation, create further price pressure and risk more ire from party hardliners who do not want to see Chavez’s model changed. Then there is the hugely sensitive move to raise fuel prices that are currently the cheapest in the world.
Officials have for months been trying to prepare Venezuelans to pay more for fuel and Caracas could do with the extra revenue, but seems to be stalling due to the risk of sparking social unrest.
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