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Vente Venezuela was accepted this Sunday as an Observer Member by the Executive Committee of the Liberal International, which defends the free market. In this way, the freedom party makes history as the first Venezuelan political organization to be integrated into the largest liberal organization in the world.
Pedro Urruchurtu, coordinator of international affairs of the party, talked to El American about the importance of this advance of the political organization. He explained that the absence of a liberal proposal and a project that has freedom as a central point made it necessary for Vente Venezuela to create a liberal proposal. These proposals, of course, would not be inspired by social democracy. Rather, thwy would seek to promote freedom, as known in the U.S. as classical liberalism.
“Vente has taken the doctrinal issue very seriously in a country that has suffered socialism in multiple forms: in a more ‘vegetarian’ version, during the democratic period, and in a ‘carnivorous-predatory’ version, during Chavismo,” said Urrruchurtu.
In that sense, he maintained that the integration of Vente to the Liberal International is a step that represents the integration of the Venezuelan party to the international arena. “With the Liberal International it is a bolder step that goes much further, since it represents the insertion of Vente in a doctrinaire international arena, that is to say, in a global liberal family; it is no longer only Vente in a regional scope, nor in a liberal scope only in Venezuela, but we already connect with liberalism all over the world (which is very varied).”
He is also sure that this is an endorsement of the country proposal for Venezuela headed by María Corina Machado, national coordinator of Vente: “Being there, on the one hand, gives us recognition; that is, the recognition that we have not had in Venezuela, because the regime is not going to give it to us and we are not looking for it either, is given to us by the international community gathered in these spaces; the voice and leadership of Vente and María Corina Machado is amplified. Besides, it also gives important support to the vision, to the project, to the proposal, to the leaders that Vente has, to its national and international presence with the diaspora and Vente Mundo,” he pointed out.
He referred to the fact that in the Liberal International there are organizations from different countries with leftist tendencies. About this, he commented that, precisely for that reason, it is an opportunity to rescue the true liberal values.
“Just as liberalism has multiple currents, the Liberal International also has them. It must be recognized that perhaps there are movements more linked to the left that clearly do not correspond in practice; even so, they have been recognized by the Liberal International itself and by some of its members as legitimate representatives of liberalism. That is why we have an enormous opportunity because being a party that is genuinely liberal, that assumes freedom as a flag and as a whole, we have to be in those spaces to really rescue the flags of liberalism”, he said.
He added: “It is part of what we have to do, and part of what we have to assume, defend and promote as a flag. For us, it is to assume liberalism from the classical point of view; not interpretations of the left, not more social-democratic visions, but liberalism as life, freedom and property, or the search for happiness, as the American founding fathers understood it.”
The message of the coordinator of Vente Venezuela
María Corina Machado pointed out that “this has been something that has been built over time, it is not something fortuitous, but it has been a relationship that, on the basis of trust, work and coherence, and based on common values and principles, today continues consolidating the international presence of our party.”
Likewise, the opposition leader added that one of the challenges of the political organizations in Venezuela is to achieve that the parties have a program, clear ideas, a doctrine and take it seriously.
“When you have a party that understands the fundamental importance of its doctrine in the political work, as well as the programmatic, then you also understand the importance of integrating into the families of similar parties.”
Williams Perdomo es periodista y escritor, especializado en las fuentes Política y Cultura.