Chavistas march in Caracas to condemn attack on electric system
Thousands of Chavistas marched through Caracas this Saturday to condemn the recent cyberattack, which they said hit the main hydroelectric plant in the country, Guri, and left almost all of Venezuela without electricity for five days.
“We celebrate here a popular victory, a victory of the Bolivarian people against conspiracy, against fascism...today we celebrate the triumph of the Bolivarian people over imperial aggression,” the Chavista leader Dario Vivas told reporters, in line with the government assertion that the “attack” was the work of the United States and the Venezuelan opposition.
Taking part in the march, headed for the Miraflores presidential palace, were various leaders of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), led by the man considered Chavismo’s second in command, Diosdado Cabello, along with ministers of the Chavista regime.
Venezuela was hit last March 7 by a massive power failure that left almost the entire country in the dark and could not be repaired until five days later.
The Maduro government said at the time that a “cyberattack” by the US had caused the blackout that paralyzed the country, particularly in terms of the water supply, transport, communications and stores.
But anti-Chavismo points to government ineptitude and bad management of the nation’s vast resources as the true cause of Venezuela’s electricity emergency.
Last Wednesday, the Central University of Venezuela (UCV), the largest in the country, presented an analysis of the power outage that refutes Maduro’s sabotage theory and places responsibility of the power cut on a fire that overcharged the transmission lines and crashed Guri’s generators.
On the same day, the Bolivarian National Armed Forces (FANB) carried out civic-military exercises to protect the country’s electricity service and water supply, for which troops were also deployed to electrical substations.
The White House meanwhile hailed the fact that the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) welcomed Ricardo Hausmann, the envoy of Venezuela’s National Assembly speaker and self-proclaimed acting president of the nation, Juan Guaido, and said that this decision would help free the country from “corruption.”
“The countries of the IDB overwhelmingly voted to affirm Interim President Guaido’s nominee as the IDB representative for Venezuela. This is an important step towards the future reconstruction and prosperity of Venezuela free from Maduro’s corruption,” John Bolton, national security adviser to US President Donald Trump, wrote on his official Twitter account.
