The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) will focus on four main areas as it initiates its organisation phase of its electoral campaign, in preparation for the presidential elections in October next year.

It will start its first phase on 7 January. Diosdado Cabello, the new vice-president of the PSUV announced yesterday that the four main areas are deployment, consolidation of the electoral platform, formation of the Great Patriotic Pole, and the government’s program.

German Ferrer, PSUV legislator, said the four areas were “necessary in order to adapt the PSUV to the electoral campaign”.

Leadership re-structure

PSUV President Hugo Chavez also announced new national leaders of the party on Sunday. He appointed Diosdado Cabello as First Vice President. Cabello was one of the army officers who, along with Chavez, took part in the uprising against then President Carlos Andres Perez in October 4, 1992. He has also headed several ministries and has been Venezuelan vice president. He replaces Cilia Flores, ex president of the national assembly.

New regional vice-presidents include Elias Jaua, also vice-president of Venezuela, for the central region, Nicolas Maduro, minister for foreign affairs, for the central-west region, Adan Chavez for the south Llanos region, and Tarek El Aissami, minister for justice, for the Andean region. The party also created a new region, the north Llanos, which will be headed by Ramon Rodriguez, who also participated in the 1992 coup attempt and has been involved in negotiations with the Colombian FARC.

Chavez said the changes were in preparation for the party’s election campaign. Many of the new regional leaders are more prominent figures.

“The PSUV, as the primary political force in the country and fundamental arm of the revolution is accommodating itself to the situations that are approaching…and that has to do with some decisions that have been made by the national leadership,” said Cabello.

Cabello said the party, under the new structure, has 31 members in the national leadership, 360 members in state political leadership teams, and 4,355 in municipal political teams.

He also said that in the recent re-organisation process, where PSUV members registered in electoral patrols, 942,054 members participated in assemblies and 78,373 representatives for the patrols were chosen. 

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