Hands Off Venezuela! No to imperialist intervention! Defend and deepen the Bolivarian Revolution!
Without signatures there must be no referendum!

The process by which the Venezuelan opposition had to re-verify the signatures they had collected to force a presidential recall referendum took place at the weekend, on May 28th to 30th. There were a number of irregularities in the process on the part of the opposition. The police raided a number of offices of the opposition Accion Democratica party where they found forged ID cards, material to make them and leaflets inciting violence. Also there were a number of cases of workers sacked and threatened if they would not re-verify their signatures. This was the case with 50 Coca-Cola workers at the Antimano plant in Caracas. The Venezuelan Coca-Cola subsidiary is owned by media magnate and opposition leader Gustavo Cisneros.

These irregularities come after hundreds of thousands of signatures had been already declared invalid by the National Electoral Commission in February, since they belonged to people who were dead, underage or the ID numbers did not coincide with their names.

The Venezuelan opposition has shown once and again its anti-democratic character. In April 2002 they organised a military coup against the democratically elected government. In December 2002 they appealed for another coup and backed it with a 60 daylong sabotage of the oil industry which caused the country multimillion dollar losses. In February 2004 they organised riots, described by Amnesty International as: “groups of opposition supporters using barricades, stones, Molotov cocktails and firework rockets”. More than 80 peasant leaders have been killed in disputes over land reform, and dozens of trade union and peoples’ leaders have been attacked and assassinated. The leaders of the opposition should not be allowed to walk free in the streets preparing the overthrow of the democratic president, but should be put on trial and sent to jail for their part in these crimes.

The opposition, the Carter Centre, the Organisation of American States, the world mass media and the US administration are piling up the pressure on the Venezuelan government of president Hugo Chavez Frias to call a recall referendum regardless of whether the necessary signatures have been collected or not. This is a scandal, particularly coming from the Bush administration, which was elected in doubtful circumstances, to say the least, and openly supported the military coup in Venezuela in 2002.

We strongly reject international pressure against a government and a revolution which have substantially improved health and education, have started an ambitious land reform programme and have opposed the privatisation of the countries’ natural resources, particularly oil. It is not the time for any concessions to the undemocratic opposition. Those opposition leaders responsible for violent undemocratic actions against the democratically elected government must be put on trial and sent to jail so that they pay for their crimes. We express once again our strongest support for the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela.

Please sign this resolution and send it to  contact@handsoffvenezuela.org