Roberto Jorquera, Caracas
In early May, the opposition to the left-wing government of President Hugo Chavez launched a campaign through the main private media outlets under its control to discredit the state-owned oil entity PDVSA.
Since then, newspaper headlines have included "PDVSA ready to be privatized", "PDVSA never to recover" and "PDVSA: production continues to drop". On May 12, opposition newspapers even went to the extent of claiming that petrol was about to run out, because PDVSA's production was low.
The private TV stations, all anti-Chavez, have run stories claiming the same thing.
None of these media outlets, owned by some of the wealthiest Venezuelans, have offered proof to back their scaremongering. The coverage is not designed to inform, but is part of the Caracas business elite's longstanding campaign to create an atmosphere of confusion and desperate panic among Venezuelans. Quoted in a May 19 Venezuela Analysis article, Venezuelan vice-president Jose Vincent Rangel condemned the campaign as a "new insurrectional assault on PDVSA". He said the opposition was preparing a "new conspiracy" against the Chavez government.
Before Chavez's 1998 election, PDVSA was being prepared for privatisation, and was run by a corrupt management clique, who treated it as their private concern. When a new constitution was adopted by referendum in 1999, it specifically forbade privatisation. Then the government passed legislation strengthening its control over PDVSA, and ensured that all the oil revenue went to the government.
The management clique responded with an attempt to shut the industry down in December 2002. The lock out was spectacularly defeated by rank-and-file oil workers, who took the industry back and ran it under their control. The old PDVSA management was sacked.
Since then, billions of dollars from the oil industry have been pumped into social programs aimed at the 80% of the population who live in poverty.
On May 20, in response to the opposition campaign, the Venezuelan government launched a national week of action in solidarity with PDVSA. Tens of thousands of people gathered in every Plaza Bolivar in the country to defend the way PDVSA was being run. In early May, the government also claimed it had discovered sabotage within PDVSA and had proof of CIA involvement.
On May 21, thousands of people attended a march that finished outside the head office of PDVSA in La Campina, Caracas. The government has also responded by running television and newspaper ads explaining the role PDVSA plays in guaranteeing all the social missions that are bringing health care and education to those who have never had access to them before. Considering the vital importance of PDVSA in the national economy, on May 5 Chavez announced that the armed forces would be incorporated into PDVSA to oversee its operations.
Acknowledging some continuing problems in PDVSA, the government has also launched a program known as the "system for the democratisation of employment within PDVSA". The central aim of the program is to encourage people, especially the unemployed, to register to work in PDVSA. Following the week of action, gatherings are planned outside the National Assembly and the main PDVSA plants throughout the country. All solidarity actions have been co-organised with the Union of Oil Workers (UTP), an affiliate of the revolutionary National Union of Workers.
From Green Left Weekly, June 1, 2005.
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