FITUG backs Venezuela Constituent Assembly

The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) has announced its support for the controversial Constituent Assembly elected last week in Venezuela under the Presidency of Nicolas Maduro.

The constituent assembly has been broadly condemned internationally as illegal and entrenching the Maduro administration. Venezuela has been ostracised in the region and further afield. A few countries have announced support for the constituent assembly including China, Bolivia and Cuba.

Critics have said that the assembly has created a dictatorship amid months of protests for Maduro to call fresh elections which has seen over 120 persons being killed.

FITUG in its statement said it “sees the completion of the process as a complimentary feat considering that the Coalition of Opposition Parties, MUD, called for a boycott and the day itself saw several intermittent eruptions of violence in some states. The process also continues in spite of the strange call by the US Administration not to proceed with the elections and even threatening sanctions.

“As we understand it, the resort to a Constituent

Assembly was yet another democratic effort by the Venezuelan President at resolving the prolonged violence and living difficulties that have beset the country and its working people particularly. The threat that the existing situation, instigated by extremists locally and financed by certain external forces, can deteriorate and lead to a civil war is everpresent. That is why countries of influence within the region and which sincerely subscribe to democracy, its norms and institutions should, especially, show support for such efforts taken by President Maduro”.

Members of FITUG include the sugar unions GAWU and NAACIE and the Guyana Labour Union.