Caracas, Feb 15. ABN (Hugo Chavez Frias).- It has been a long march to get to this date: February 15. It is a glorious, bright date to consolidate the full democratic rights and powers. Because it is the fate we have drawn up and we are willing to give our souls to reach it. It is a historical time that commits us, the time of our ancestors, and the time of our grandsons and daughters. It will not be one more battle: on this occasion we have the opportunity to clear up the horizon by re-boosting the future of a people committed to the high will of this hour.
Moving forward with the dream and the liberating project of our Father the Liberator, embodying it and fulfilling it involve the date waiting for us today: we can consolidate on Sunday what started at the beginning of the 19th century, between the edge of thought and the edge of swords, with our firm will to give us the right to be real and truly free, real and truly sovereign.
What is at stake today, February 15th, can be summarized in a dilemma that must be solved by the people: keeping on moving towards the full exercise of the people’s sovereignty, or the counterrevolutionary pretension of stopping and restricting the revolutionary democracy. It is the dilemma of Shakespeare’s Hamlet: to be (Yes), or not to be (No).
We have filled the Venezuelan history with meaning for ten years: Bolivarian, open, popular, constructive and liberating meaning. In the past, history did not belong to us, others plotted it and we suffered it. We were simple pawns on an evil chess board arranged by the empire and its unpatriotic sepoys. This changed, and it changed forever in the last ten years: the people who inherited the great battles, live incarnation of all our fights, has put in their blood, bones, souls and hearts for this revolution. All of us have been one main protagonist of the transformations undertaken: transformations that do not finish because it is necessary to keep on completing the sacred yearning we have imposed ourselves: to have a free Homeland, a good and beautiful Homeland, Socialist Homeland, for us, for our children and the children of our children.
I want to say we have proposed an ideology that has experienced good times as well as difficulties. That’s true, but since we gave birth to it, it has had the same horizon: our people have become more and more honorable, our people, who recognize themselves for the traveled way and understand what the future demands. Definitely our people, who know that only fraternally united, making efforts and moving on the same path, may be able to say we are getting closer to the dream, the top dream of the freed homeland. Then, there must not be any doubt about it: Today February 15th, this is what we are putting at stake with our decision!
The great poet William Blake said in his aphorism: there is a time of sowing and there is a time of harvest. This idea is useful to illustrate what I want to warn. Since we took office, these have been times of patient and laborious sowing. We have harvested some things, but it has not been enough. Today, February 15th, it’s the date to guarantee ourselves the beginning of great harvest times; it’s time to fill the granaries of this beautiful path we are all committed to, for a future that really belongs to us and not a simple accident of time and life. Today, February 15th, after the Yes victory, the people’s united voice can say: The future starts to be ours!!!
We don’t live or inhabit a country. We live and inhabit a challenge, a homeland challenge. This is why our conquests are always beyond what we achieve; and this is why it’s so important for us to give shape to socialism, it’s a permanent demand: a border we have to overcome everyday.
This is the reason of our tireless effort; in straightforward terms, we deserve it: this is the challenge of an authentic and revolutionary democracy, full of participation and full of protagonism. This is the idea knocking on our door; this is the powerful idea that must encourage us, as Victor Hugo once said: There is nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.
Finally, the Church also warns about it: “Life Under the Sun: Everything Has Its Time.”
It’s the people’s time then…
This is why I repeat:
I’m waiting for you in that place!!
We will win!
Hugo Chávez Frías / February 15th, 2009
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