The second phase of the XVI National Conference of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) agreed on March 17 “to propose to the Venezuelan people – in particular to its working class and to the allied forces of the popular, authentically democratic, patriotic, anti-imperialist and revolutionary camp – the presidential candidacy of journalist Manuel Isidro Molina.”
The announcement was made by the General Secretary of the Central Committee of the PCV, Oscar Figuera, in a public statement to the media after the meeting of one of the highest leadership bodies of the Venezuelan communists.
“This candidacy is not only to participate in the electoral process, but it is a proposal to advance in the process of accumulation of forces and impulse of the struggles of the workers, peasants, communities and Indigenous peoples. Of the popular movement in general: of women, youth and students; of the intelligentsia capable of identifying itself with a popular democratic solution to the national catastrophe for which both the bourgeois fraction that leads the country from Miraflores and the bourgeois fractions that from the opposition have promoted lines of intervention and foreign aggression against the country are responsible,” explained Figuera.
The leader of the PCV described the proposal as “a candidacy to renew the confidence of the working class and the Venezuelan people in the own forces; to raise and recover the dignity of our people against those who attack us daily and try to lead us to situations of violence, abstention, fragmentation of the popular forces to continue reigning and continue taking advantage of the spaces of power and government for their enrichment.”
Manuel Isidro Molina thanked the decision of the XVI National Conference of the PCV and declared that he assumes the commitment of this candidacy “as a tool for the union of a majority that does not accept the current state of moral degradation; that does not accept that politics is dirty, that politics is corrupt. A majority that does not accept that politics is ─ as the government of President Nicolás Maduro ─ a tool for illicit enrichment.”
Molina stressed that “the integral reconstruction of Venezuela begins with the moral and ethical reconstruction of the nation.” He added, “The Communist Party of Venezuela, today judicially attacked by the government of Nicolás Maduro, is an example of dignity, of honesty, of historical commitment for the happiness of our people.”
The presidential candidate specified that the program he will present to the country is based on “the defense of the interests of the majority of our population, today impoverished and betrayed.”
“We declare ourselves defenders of the salary of Venezuelan workers, of the legitimate rights of retirees and pensioners ─ today practically thrown to hunger, despair, illness and premature death,” he affirmed.
Molina called on the country to maintain confidence in the option presented today. “We are making our way in the heat of the demands of the Venezuelan people and that we will not fail. We are people of our word; we are people of firmness, and we are used to rowing against the current”.
“We are going to provide Venezuela with a viable alternative and in unity we will achieve it,” he concluded.
Manuel Isidro Molina Peñaloza is currently the national coordinator of the Alternative Popular Movement (MPA). He is the son of the Trujillo state communist leader Manuel Isidro Molina Gavidia.
He has also held positions of popular election. He was a deputy to the Congress of the Republic of Venezuela during the periods 1989-1994 and 1994-1999. He was deputy director of the Parliamentary Fraction of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) between 1993 and 1994, and President of the Media Commission of the Chamber of Deputies between 1994 and 1996.
Tribuna Popular
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