Category: Venezuela
Some of the scholarship recipients | Photo: teleSUR
Published 23 June 2015
Saint Lucian and Venezuelan representatives celebrate the first group of Saint Lucian students to study medicine on full scholarships in Venezuela.
Almost two dozen Saint Lucian medical students will soon embark on their journey to Venezuela, after receiving scholarships by its government to pursue a seven-year course in community medicine.
The young men and women will study at the Salvador Allende University of Health Sciences, funded by the ALBA group of Latin American and Caribbean nations.
The community medicine program proposes to train doctors with an elevated social, humanistic, ethical, scientific and technical commitment. The program strives to train health professionals to offer holistic medical attention to patients, advocating for them and working to heal and rehabilitate the individual, their families and the community.
Saint Lucia’s Health Minister Alvina Bertrame Reynolds welcomed the Venezuelan initiative at a time the Saint Lucian government seeks to strengthen health services in rural areas and communities across the island, saying this area of care needs specialists.
“Students, parents, what a wonderful gift to the people of Saint Lucia in giving us an opportunity to be trained and come back medical professionals,” she said.
“You are well needed to help us fight this battle, because you are going to study integral community medicine. It doesn’t place you only in a hospital. It places you directly, personally in the community and I really salute Commandante Chavez and Commandante Castro for that vision.”
Venezuela’s Representative in Saint Lucia, Leiff Escalona, says her government is happy to be strengthening ties with Saint Lucia in both education and health.
“It is a social, scientific career. It is a future for your family, for your country too and for the people of Saint Lucia. Of course, it is a pleasure for the government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to continue with this support,” Escalona said.
The scholarship includes tuition fees, air travel, medical care, lodging and a monthly allowance. According to the requirements of the scholarships, applicants must be between the ages of 18 and 24 and come from low income households.
Caracas, 26 May. AVN.- Once more, Venezuelan opposition asked the National Electoral Council to organize its primary elections, held on May 17 in order to choose, this time, its candidates for parliamentary elections scheduled for late 2015. It was a matter of an internal election that reaffirms the confidence in the automated voting system that, ironically, the opposition attempts to delegitimize every time it loses a ballot.
Even though revolutionary leader and expert in electoral issues, Jorge Rodriguez, called opposition primaries, “falsarias” (false primaries) for being the biggest failure of citizen participation in elections of the opposition with only 7.2% of registered voters, there are two positive aspects of this election to highlight: first, the use of the fingerprint scanners and second, the opposition did not use the voting notebooks.
“The only positive balance is that they can no longer say that the electoral system is fraudulent, that voting machines alter the results, and can not say anymore we can not use fingerprint scanners because in this election the Venezuelan right used voting machines, fingerprint readers and electronic notebooks,” Rodriguez said Monday at a press conference.
“They can not say that what helped them for their elections yesterday is not going to help when holding parliamentary election, nor claim fraud,” said the revolutionary leader.
This represents a significant step forward within a sector that has systematically used notebooks and fingerprint readers as a means to try to cast doubts on transparency and expertise of the Venezuelan electoral system.
On April 2014, after former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles lost elections against President Nicolas Maduro and claimed a “fraud” that left 11 people dead and a 100% audit of the polling stations, the right-wing used the voting notebooks as the main argument of its campaign against the electoral institution.
Capriles insisted that the notebooks should be reviewed, even though this is a residual of the manual system that was fully automated after a long process of research and investments which began in 1972 and consolidated in 2004 with the complete automation of a voting platform, continually being updated and considered the safest in the world.
The notebooks are actually a backwardness of manual system. Automation isolated any defect that could lead to electoral fraud, so widespread in the 1970s in Venezuela.
These notebooks used to be signed after the voter printed his or her choice through the voting machine. Given that they are hand tool, they are not exempt from human error, as for example voters who signed in the line which does not correspond to them or those who put their fingerprint and did not sign, or those that instead of signing, wrote a check mark on or a cross.
This is why authorities devised the use of fingerprint readers –improved machines now called Integrated Authentication System (SAI, Spanish acronym)– which are devices connected to each of the voting machines to identify voters through their fingerprint.
They safeguard the principle of “one voter, one vote” by identifying voter through fingerprint and preventing usurpation of a citizen in any form and also preventing double voting.
The use of these machines makes unnecessary the use of voting notebooks, as the SAI saves and supports data and fingerprints of voters who must be identified to enable the voting machines.
Rodriguez stressed that the Venezuelan electoral system is “so reliable that the opposition used it in their primaries”. This same system will organize the internal elections of Voluntad Popular (People’s Will) party, led by Leopoldo Lopez, currently being prosecuted for his involvement in the attempted coup and terrorist acts that left 43 people dead in 2014.
Caracas, 10 Abr. AVN.- Some 13,447,651 Venezuelan and Cuban people signed the letter to demand US President Barack Obama to repeal decree declaring Venezuela a “threat” to national security and foreign policy of his country.
These signatures, collected since last March 18 in response to this attack on national sovereignty, will be taken by president Nicolas Maduro, to the 7th Summit of the Americas, to be held in Panama this 10 and 11 April.
The letter was read on national radio and television, by Maria Rosa Jimenez, representing the revolutionary youth. Flanked by the people, Jimenez delivered these signatures to the head of state, in a ceremony held at Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas.
Following is the full text of the letter:
On March 9, 2015, our country was the subject of the largest aggression by a foreign empire: an executive order issued by the White House that has stigmatized our nation with an unusual and extraordinary threat.
This absurd statement has aroused the patriotic unity in a same desire to be free.
President of the United States, Barack Hussein Obama, this is the reason why the people and the vast majority of governments around the world have demanded repeal of this unbelievable decree against our unyielding homeland.
Venezuela in its 205 years of history, in its 205 years as a Republic, has never hurt any nation or has committed the misfortune to sully the right and the political destiny of other peoples, on the contrary, those humble beings who gave their lives to free the continent from the colonial tyranny are remembered around the world as liberators. This is thus a small but immensely proud nation, made up of men and women who have loved and have always defended it as the most appreciated and inherited property.
Our nature is peaceful, our ideals are libertarian ones. The form of government the people have chosen to embody, idealize them, is a global example of the fight against poverty, social exclusion and inequality. No wonder we are the country that since 1999 has increased 60 times public investment aimed at social development and participation.
With the same libertarian impetus for over 200 years, our men and women are armed with intelligence to gain complete independence. President Obama, your government has nothing to fear from Venezuelans. Our only enemies are and will be poverty and inequality, which we learned to fight following the example of our beloved leader Hugo Chavez.
For all this, millions of souls, millions of wills of this peaceful country stand up in one voice to say: a finger pointing strongly to the heart of the world, millions of hearts are one heartbeat, millions of hearts are one fist. 30 million of human beings that choose to live, 30 million voices will sing the hurricane of love.
We, the undersigned, being born free and determined to live in freedom, created equal and committed to live together in equality, raised for independence, democratic by choice, born human and meant to grow in humanity; we, citizens of the nation where one in three compatriots pursues education; we, patriots of the country with less inequality in Latin America, we know about equality; we, citizens of one of the five happiest countries in the world, we affirm that happiness does not threaten.
President of the North, nobody has chosen you as executioner. President Obama, repeal destruction. President of the North, repeal the decree.
Long live the people of Bolivar and Chavez! Long live peace! Long live Bolivar! Long live the Venezuelan people! Long live Chavez!
In Caracas, April 9, 2015
We Shall Overcome.
Please notice (in the article below) that these progressive groups in Panama raise the issue of compensation for the death and destruction wreaked by the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1989. See my homepage for the historical context of that invasion: Panama: Background to the U.S. Invasion of 1989
Jane Franklin
http://www.janefranklin.info
NYC Havana Blog, April 7, 2015
Panamanian Citizens Denounce Plot against Cuba, Venezuela
Panamanian social organizations denounced today that Venezuelan and Cuban counterrevolutionaries aim to use the Panamanian nation as a platform to plot against those nations during the 7th Summit of the Americas.
During an open letter sent to Foreign Minister Isabel de Saint Malo, members from 15 union, student, grass-roots and solidarity groups expressed their deep concern for “the meetings, activities and mobilizations of protests convened by opposition sectors and dissidents from the Republics of Cuba and Venezuela.â€
With this acting, they aim to use the country as a platform to coordinate actions to interfere in the internal affairs of these two nations, in addition to offend and denigrate the dignity of the heads of States and the official delegations from Cuba and Venezuela.
The text also refers to the dialogue started between Cuba and the United States for the possible restoration of diplomatic relations, “a process all international community approves and waits, at least, the lifting of the disgraceful economic blockade on Cuba.â€
Another issue that captures the attention is the U.S. presidential decree stating Venezuela as a threat for its national security and that of the continent, a measure rejected by all Latin American and Caribbean peoples, the document states.
However, there are some people who seek to plot to become environment rarefied and produce an interventionist statement against the South American nation. Infamous figures of the Cuban counterrevolution and Venezuelan opposition, sponsored by the United States and other extreme rightwing sectors from the continent and Europe, are already arriving for such effects, the letter states.
Despite we will not carry out demonstrations against President Barack Obama, as the national government requested, we will send the demand for the just compensation to the victims of the 1989 invasion, cleaning and decontamination of former military bases, the signatories say.
For such purposes, we respectfully request the national government, to take the appropriate measures, otherwise, Panamanian grass-roots organizations will respect our country, while we held them responsible for any lamentable situation that may arise, the letter concludes.
The Cuban Workers Federation denounced yesterday the exclusion of which it was subjected by the organizers of the Civil Society Forum, one of the four events taking place prior to the Summit of the Americas.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the creation of the new Ministry of Eco-socialism and Water during his weekly television program, March 24, 2015. Â
The governments of the Bolivarian Revolution have taken concrete steps to confront the threat of climate change. On Tuesday, Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro announced the creation of the Ministry of Eco-socialism and Water, which will be tasked with protecting the environment in the context of the construction of 21st century socialism.
President Maduro said the creation of the new ministry was in direct response to demands, made by environmental social movements, to take more dramatic action in the face of climate change.
According to the Venezuelan head of state, the ministry will also be in charge of strengthening “the ecology of socialism of the 21st century.†The new body will supervise the implementation of the National Water Plan, designed to ensure public access to water, as well as the Tree Mission, which involves the community in reforestation efforts.
President Maduro made the announcement during his weekly television program where he was joined by Guillermo Barreto, who will head up the new ministry. Barreto previously served as vice-minister for environmental eco-socialism. Despite being one of the world’s largest produces of oil, Venezuela has made significant efforts to address climate change.
In November, Venezuela hosted the summit of environmental activists in anticipation of the United Nations COP20 climate change conference, where delegates to the summit met directly with government ministers. Venezuela’s five-year national development plan — known as the “Plan for the Homeland†— calls for the “preservation of life on the planet and the salvation of the human race.â€
This content was originally published by teleSUR/English
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