Calls to Delay Venezuela’s Dec. 6 Election Represent Usurpation: Fermin

Sociologist, university professor and Venezuelan opposition lawmaker—holding numerous public offices over the last several decades—Claudio Fermin, says December parliamentary elections are the path out of Venezuela’s political crisis. 

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Known as a politician of the Acción Democrática (Democratic Action) party, his new party “Solutions for Venezuela” will be running in the December 6th parliamentary elections and spoke about the thought process behind this decision in an interview with Minister of Culture, Ernesto Villegas, on his program “Aqui Con Ernesto.”

Solutions for Venezuela formalized the party’s nominations on Tuesday before the National Electoral Council (CNE).

He says some members of his former party, Democratic Action, now associated with Henry Ramos Allup, have been co-opted and are deeply tied to the U.S. and extremist figures but the Democratic Action represented by Bernabé Gutiérrez has gotten tired of the politics of abstention.

To him, his two-year old party represents patriotism, understanding, the vote and reconciliation: “That culture of extreme polarization has done us a lot of damage. I’ve known friends, relatives of mine, Chavistas, who believe the country would be better off if the opposition didn’t exist and I’ve known friends of the opposition who say the country would be a paradise if Chavistas didn’t exist.”

Fermin has been accused as acting as a ‘collaborator’ of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) government for running in the 2021 National Assembly rather than boycotting with the ranks of far-right factions of the opposition backed by the United States.

The 70-year-old academic recognizes the democratic election of President Nicolas Maduro on May 20th, 2018 and has argued that the way to take power from the PSUV is through elections.

Perhaps the largest divergence in views between Fermin and those aligned with U.S. puppet Juan Guaido, has been Fermin’s rejection of the economic blockade on Venezuela, but he says the Washington-allied figures are the exception, not the rule.

“The majority of those who are watching your program and the majority of Venezuelans are patriots. Now, the discourse of polarization, who does it focus on? On Maria Corina Mechado, Ledezma, Julio Borges. Do you think people who attend meetings of the Pentagon, people who already have calluses on their knees, from so much begging for Trump to intervene, and people like Vecchio who visit the Southern Command and that makes them feel proud, or politicians who think that Marco Rubio is their superior represents the majority? They’re a minority. That’s a microscopic elite.”

He said it’s this exalting of such extreme figures which further serves to polarize the already divided country.

Now, Fermin is calling on popular opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who ran against Hugo Chavez and held numerous offices, to join the parliamentary elections. Capriles has gone back and forth on his position regarding the vote, speaking against Guaido one minute and entertaining the idea of elections then saying the vote should not be held amid the pandemic.

But he says that citizens should exercise their right to elect their representatives based on their own inclination, not based on what big names of Chavismo or the opposition say.

Fermin cautioned against the infinite administrative continuation of the 2015 National Assembly as a dangerous proposal by those who are setting a trap with calls to postpone the election represents a usurpation. The National Assembly’s mandate expires on January 5th but Guaido and Ramos Allup appear intent on maintaining a parallel legislature.