Steve Ellner: Venezuela Needs More Check & Balance Mechanism to Fight Corruption and Abuse of Power
Channel: Orinoco Tribune
Date: 2023-10-01

Caracas (OrinocoTribune.com)—During an interview with US intellectual Steve Ellner, Orinoco Tribune questioned the US professor on different issues from Venezuelan domestic issues to global issues. On the last question about the lessons he learned from closely following President Hugo Chavez and Nicolas Maduro governments, Ellner raised the importance of building a robust mechanism of check and balance to counter the corruption issue affecting Venezuela for decades.

On this issue the US academic raised the importance of differentiated roles between government officials, between United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and government officials but also of building political alliances with parties strong enough to counter balance corruption but also abuse of power cases.

Steve Ellner is a US academic that taught social science at the Universidad de Oriente in Puerto La Cruz, Venezuela for over 25 years, he undertook research projects there a few years later, he taught political science for 5 years at the Central University of Venezuela, he was a visiting professor at Duke University and currently he is the associate managing editor of the theoretical and scholarly journal Latin American Perspectives. He is co-editor of Venezuelan Politics in the Chávez Era: Class, Polarization and Conflict (Lynne Rienner, 2003), The Latin American Left: From the Fall of Allende to Perestroika (Westview, 2003). 

The interview was conducted on Wednesday, September 27, by Orinoco Tribune's editor and founder Jesus Rodriguez-Espinoza and revolved around the following questions:

On the question about the Monroe Doctrine Ellner said that he "personally believe that the discussion really boils down to the good cop bad cop duo in that the Democrats and the Republicans, the Democrats who represent more of a soft line position in terms of their discourse and the Republicans, or especially the neocons, who play an important role in the formulation of policy in the Republican Party. They represent more of a hard line, but in practice they're on the same page. And just to give you one example of that or one proof of Know, the most important position in the Congress with regard to foreign relations, is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee president or chairman. And that's Bob Menendez, who's a Democrat. But everybody says that he's really Republican when it comes to foreign policy. Why do the Democrats, if they really are intent on projecting a different line with regards to the Republicans, why do they choose somebody like Menendez."

He added that despite democrats claiming that the Monroe Doctrine is no longer valid as John Kerry said in 2013 allegedly because the US no longer acts alone when intervening in affairs of other nations, the case of Cuba points into the opposite direction. "The differences between the Democratic and Republican Party when it comes to the Monroe Doctrine is a difference of wording but not a difference of substance," the US professor added.

On the issue of the "War Against Venezuela" that Ellner is trying to coin to differentiate other US led destabilization operations around the globe with the one push over Venezuela, he said that Venezuela is not an exceptional case but in terms of intensity Venezuela stands up if compare to other countries.

Ellner explained that in 2015 the Obama administration signed the executive order declaring Venezuela an extraordinary and unusual thread to US national security, and that same year harsh financial sanctions were imposed on the state owned oil company Petroleos de Venezuela, the engine of Venezuela's economy, in a moment when oil prices began to nosedive.

He recommended reading the book "Extraordinary Threat: The U.S. Empire, the Media, and Twenty Years of Coup Attempts in Venezuela," by Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur, for their exhaustive enumerations of most US aggressive measures against the Venezuelan people. In a recent article entitled "Objective Conditions in Venezuela: Maduro’s Defensive Strategy and Contradictions Among the People," Ellner also enumerates many of this acts of aggression in an attempt to put context to certain liberal decisions taken by the Maduro administration to counter the damage caused by the US and its allies, that have been used by the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) to support its recent confrontation with Chavismo.

On this issue Orinoco Tribune's editor said that he believes that "it's extremely important that you try to coin that term, because I have the impression that a lot of people outside Venezuela, in other countries tend to compare Venezuelan recent struggles with their own mild, in most cases, struggles. And that, in my opinion, tend to make them believe that sometimes radical decisions taken in Venezuela are 'too much' according to their standards. But I believe that they ponder that radicalism based on their own country experiences, and they don't really measure what has been really happening in Venezuela."