Caracas, October 23^rd 2012 – In a cabinet meeting with his top ministers on Saturday, Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez strongly criticised his political team for failing to show commitment to the participatory democratic model currently being proposed by his government and urged them to undertake serious “self-criticism”.

The meeting was the first cabinet meeting to have taken place since the Venezuelan national elections were held on 7 October, in which Chavez won a third presidential term with over 54% of the vote.

During the televised meeting, Chavez made many criticisms of his party, especially with regards to the construction of the country’s communes, which group together communal councils in a given region.

“Where are the communes?” he asked newly appointed Vice-president Nicolas Maduro.

“In (socialist city) Belen, we keep giving houses to people, but you can’t see a commune anywhere. Not even the spirit of the commune, which right now is more important than the commune itself; a communal culture… this is a matter for all of us, this (the communes) are part of the soul of this project,” he said.

Although the Law of the Communes was passed in 2010 and a Ministry of the Communes established, many of the local self-government bodies have not made it past the initial stages of registration. Continue reading “Venezuela’s Chavez to Ministers: Now is the Time for Self-Criticism”