On February 21 2015, BBC Mundo published an extensive article, titled The Difficulties of Being a Leader in Venezuela (Las Dificultades de ser Gobernante en Venezuela) by Daniel Pardo, BBC correspondent in Venezuela, containing tendentious claims and inaccuracies that amount to an unfair and unjustifiably negative representation of the Bolivarian government.

In this regard, the Venezuelan Embassy in Britain wishes to clarify some of the issues addressed in the aforementioned article:

1. It is false that the opposition is persecuted for political reasons. Confirmation of this is the existence of a well-organised opposition that enjoys all the same constitutional rights as the other political parties in the country and has participated in 19 national elections in the last 15 years. The same applies to any other organisation that works and acts within the law. There have been many instances of unconstitutional and illegal actions carried out by the opposition coalition, including the 2002 coup d’etat and the oil lock-out in December 2002 that lasted until January 2003 (which cost the country billions of dollars), from a long list of attempts to disrupt the constitutional order and overthrow the legitimate and democratically elected government.

2 It is false that there is political persecution of opposition mayors. The 33 cases mentioned in the article are due to investigations initiated not against the mayoralties but against individuals charged with illegal or criminal actions. The government has also carried out investigations against governing party officials, such as the mayor of Valencia, Edgardo Parra, who spent six months in prison on corruption charges, with a trial still pending, or in the case of the former mayor of Maturin, Numa Rojas, who is currently in prison.

3 It is false that the Miranda state police force is being prevented from fulfilling its duties. On the contrary, the government and government spokespeople repeatedly called upon the Miranda state governor to ensure that the Miranda police force fulfilled its legal obligation to prevent street violence, known as the “Guarimbas,” during the period of February to June 2014 which resulted in the deaths of 43 Venezuelans. At that time, the governor and the Miranda state police force refused to heed these calls and adopted a negligently passive attitude towards the violence unleashed by extremists on the lives and welfare of ordinary people.

The extremist violence from February to June took place in some 18 municipalities, most of them under the political control of the opposition, and where the mayors and municipal authorities, including the local police forces under their control, such as Polichacao, PoliBaruta, and Polimiranda, were guilty of a dereliction of duty, of doing nothing to prevent the violence of the extreme right.

4 The so-called decentralisation implemented in the 1990s, before Hugo Chavez’s first presidential term, was essentially a neoliberal policy that had dire social consequences because it did not link the regions to national development plans and concentrated on promoting patronage and bureaucracy at state and municipal levels. This “decentralisation” was aimed at perpetuating the social exclusion of millions and reinforcing inequality as resources were concentrated in affluent municipalities at the expense of areas of low socio-economic development, where the majority of the population resided.
The Bolivarian government has made great strides in eradicating poverty and social exclusion precisely because it distributes and redistributes fiscal resources to municipalities and governments to meet the needs of the population. This has made the dismantling of the neoliberal decentralisation essential.

The Bolivarian Constitution of Venezuela, approved by nearly 80 per cent of the electorate in 1999, stipulates that the basis of the political structure of Venezuela is participatory democracy and essential to it are bodies of grassroots representation such as the communal councils. These councils allow millions of Venezuelans, who were previously excluded, to have power and direct participation in the issues concerning their neighbourhood, parish, district or city hall. The force of participatory democracy in Venezuela is expressed in the existence of many other grassroots organisations.

5 It is completely false that municipalities or governorates under the control of the opposition have been left without resources. The budget for 2015 increased by 34.21 per cent compared to 2014 and the funding for social programmes was increased by 34 per cent. In the case of the governor of Miranda, Henrique Capriles controls one of largest regional budgets in the country.

In this regard, the government’s policies on health, education, housing, transport, health and hygiene, job creation, and other areas are also implemented at the federal level including the states of Miranda and Caracas, which have benefited greatly. For the state of Miranda the figures speak for themselves — the government has built 71,143 homes and 36,433 more are under construction, while the Miranda governorship that Henrique Capriles heads, despite having sufficient federal and local state resources, has nothing significant to show in this area, although he claims that his government has built these houses.

6 The charge against the Bolivarian government of the creation of a clientelistic patronage network withelectoral objectives is not only biased, but false. The ethical essence of the Bolivarian government since its inception has been and will continue to be the promotion of social progress, as demonstrated by massive poverty reduction, universal free healthcare and education, the construction of 700,000 houses for low-income families as well as many other achievements. Venezuela has already met the Millennium Development Goals and, despite its temporary difficulties caused by falling oil prices and an externally and internally induced economic war, has one of the lowest rates of inequality, including the smallest gender gap in the continent. The Venezuelan people support these objectives, having voted overwhelmingly for the Bolivarian government in 19 free, fair and transparent elections in an electoral system that former US president Jimmy Carter described as the best in the world. And thanks to the Bolivarian government’s vigorous policy of social and political inclusion, voter registration has increased from around 10 million voters in 1999 to almost 20 million in 2014. Bolivarian Venezuela vigorously promotes democracy and social progress.

7 The article quotes Jesus Torrealba, secretary of the Venezuelan coalition of opposition parties (MUD), who claims that the government is trying to force the opposition to abandon the proper democratic mechanisms to resolve conflicts. The truth, however, is that President Nicolas Maduro convened a National Peace Conference at the height of the wave of violence in February 2014 in an attempt to engage all parties in dialogue to bring an end to the bloodshed, but the opposition boycotted the conference.

In short, the article is full of unsubstantiated accusations and inaccuracies. No effort is made to interview a representative of the government regarding the claims of individuals associated with the opposition. Mr Pardo simply presents these allegations as the truth.

In purely journalistic terms, the embassy would like to take this opportunity to emphasise to the BBC what is stated in its guidelines on journalistic practice, specifically in Chapter 1.2.2 of the BBC’s Editorial Values. It states: “Our output ... will be well sourced, based on sound evidence, thoroughly tested and presented in clear, precise language. We will strive to be honest and open about what we don’t know and avoid unfounded speculation.”