Cuban Minister for Fishing, Alfredo Lopez has announced a joint venture with Venezuela to undertake fishing on the high seas in an effort to resolve the insufficient offer of fish in his country. Lopez says Cuba is developing two strategic lines to solve the problem of food shortages especially seafood and the first is to recover fishing on the high seas. The decision to set up a joint venture was taken during a meeting between Venezuela and Cuba at the fourth Petrocaribe summit. The second line will be to develop fish farming. In 2007, Cuba produced more than 22,000 tonnes of shrimps, tilapia and other farmed fish. In 2006, the European Union imported 5,000 tonnes of fish products from Cuba.
Interior & Justice (MIJ) Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin says his country's anti-drugs struggle is centered on capturing narco-trafficking kings and the seizure of drug transshipments. The Minister say he's convinced of complicity in the country facilitating the transit of drugs through Venezuela. The Minister reveals that seizures have increased 300%. Such figures are not to show off, Rodriguez Chacin argues, they are a sub-product of the real struggle, namely the struggle against the capos and those facilitating the transit of drugs through Venezuela on any level, whether they be members of the government, state employees or private citizens. Rodriguez Chacin maintains that Venezuela will refuse any petition to extradite drug-lord, Hermagoras Gonzalez without him first paying for crimes committed and without sharing of information. The Minister contends that he has always questioned US anti-drugs policies inside Colombia. "Anyone who flies over Colombia at a low altitude and slow speed can see poppy fields ... The US contribution to Colombia is not for the war on drugs, which is just a front hiding other geo-strategic reasons."
On Saturday in the presence of 1,440 members of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), President Chavez has sworn in State political teams of the party elected by socialist assemblies several weeks ago. The President has highlighted the date of the swearing- in ceremony, April 19, which is the 198th anniversary of the start of Venezuela's Independence struggle against the Spanish. PSUV Andean region vice president, Ali Rodriguez Araque has told members that the Socialist hope is re-born in Venezuela after many thought that it had ended with the fall of the Soviet Union when many people throughout the world gave up and betrayed their dreams.
President Chavez called on the national leadership of the fledgling PSUV party to activate a political bureau was in each state. The political organisation will be in permanent action, the President ventures, and he would like to see the bureaus activated as soon as possible to avoid a top-heavy leadership. The regions must be given importance and contact between political bureaus in each state and regional vice presidents is fundamental.
Discipline in the new political party is fundamental, President Chavez has told members of the PSUV during a swearing-in ceremony of regional leaderships. Chavez says he would prefer to lose a state governorship than have to bear an undisciplined state governor and hammers home the fact that the party has no candidates at the moment for the upcoming regional elections, however much a person member might be winning in local poll surveys. The President says one task of the proposed political bureaus will be to identify people presenting themselves as saviors or future mayors and state governors ... " a person with a personal project and ambition cannot be a real Socialist."
As regards internal dissension, Chavez calls on the national leadership to open up channels for criticism and internal differences to avoid the desertions the revolutionary movement has suffered in the past. The President admits that there has been a lack of internal debate and absence of any channel that allows expressions of criticism but warns that anybody with a critique should not go running to opposition channels to air their views complaining that it is the only place where they can express their opinions.
Referring to the electoral defeat on December 2, the President reflects that the jolt it gave the revolutionary movement is welcome but he slams critics who have questioned the selection method of candidates to the national leadership, warning that he has identified one "squalid," who attacks via the Internet, passing himself off as a revolutionary.
Speaking in Panama during a meeting of political parties of Latin America, former Defense Minister General (ret.) Raul Baduel has called on Latin American and Caribbean political leaders to view Venezuela as a " dangerous example of the birth of hegemonic politics and growing power. The General says it is one of the biggest obstacles to setting up a really democratic regime in Venezuela and what is happening there is unnatural and annuls real democracy. Venezuela is currently trapped in an antidemocratic system, Baduel proclaims, where there is no autonomy of public powers and where the executive exercises the functions of other powers and President Chavez wants to perpetuate himself in power. Furthermore, he urges (continental) media "not to lend themselves to the ploy of politicians who take advantage of people's needs to reach power using a nationalist discourse."
Interior & Justice (MIJ) Minister, Ramon Rodriguez Chacin has announced the setting up of units for communal police in the different parishes of Caracas as part of the Safe Caracas Plan. The Minister says communal police can have direct contact with local communities, getting to know them, receiving denunciations and getting closer to people in a humanistic way, providing necessary security. The units will also have the necessary technology to help improve security in the capital, Rodriguez Chacin reports, and at the moment there are eight units functioning already in different parishes.
President Chavez says multilateral financial organizations are beginning to realize that the planet is entering into an unparalleled food crisis and taking desperate measures to end it. This is something that Venezuela has been working on for the last nine years, the President rightly boasts, through implementing a Socialist model of society. Speaking to the leadership of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Chavez contends that the UN Food & Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is asking for multi-million financial resources to attend millions of hungry people appearing every day on all continents including the old Europe and the USA. The President points to programs undertaken five years ago, such as the Mercal food distribution program and other initiatives regarding production and distribution of quality food accessible to everybody. Sooner or later, the President states, those who still do not recognize what the government is doing will have to walk the same path and if they resist, they will have to face the People demanding profound and radical changes to a situation of misery and poverty and the wide gap between rich minorities and poor majorities.
Patrick J. O'Donoghue
patrick.vheadline@gmail.com
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