By Neirlay Andrade
July 14, 2023 Aporrea
Who is Henry Parra? He is the PSUV operative who requested the legal intervention against the PCV.
CARACAS – July 14, 2023 – Last Monday, July 10, in a spectacular media display, from the outskirts of the Supreme Court of Justice (TSJ), the country witnessed how a handful of apparently unknown faces declared themselves the “grassroots” of the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) and demanded a legal intervention.
Before the cameras of this program organized by the Ministry of Communication and Information appeared a man who claimed to be a communist militant for 50 years and who described the leadership of the PCV as “illegitimate” and “illegal”. His name is Henry Parra and for some months he has been accompanying the Vice President of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), Diosdado Cabello, in government rallies.
This is not the first time that Parra closes ranks with members of the PSUV leadership. Back in 2021 he publicly announced his resignation from the PCV to support the candidacy of Freddy Bernal for the governorship of the state of Táchira.
At that time he claimed to be a “lifelong member” as he did last July 10 outside the TSJ. And as if it were a trite script, at that time he also ignored the political line of the PCV, built collectively in the XV National Conference.
After that, he was confined to a bureaucratic position in the region until his reappearance in April this year, when he announced his intention to “rescue” the PCV. Since then, Parra joined the assault plan together with other political operators of Diosdado Cabello who toured the country offering money and positions to communist militants so that they would join his adventure. Their failure was resounding; the internal unity of the PCV prevailed and they were forced to organize a fake congress with active PSUV members to make public opinion believe that the so-called “grassroots” of the PCV were in disagreement with their leadership and the line drawn by the XVI National Congress.
But, what did this congress agree on to unleash this anti-democratic onslaught in which Parra has an active role? Well, the conclave of Venezuelan communists resolved in November last year to break definitively with the anti-working class and anti-popular policies of President Nicolás Maduro.
The leadership of the PSUV expected that the XVI National Congress would provoke an internal break within the PCV, but the truth is that it was unanimously agreed to advance in the regroupment of revolutionary and popular forces to confront the neo-liberal offensive underway. From that moment on, the virulence of the attacks by representatives of the PSUV increased. Week after week, Diosdado Cabello made use of his shameless control over the state media to assure, without any argument whatsoever, that the PCV had commitments with imperialism.
The harangues on patriotism have not been lacking in this television campaign of defamation. However, it was Parra himself who surprisingly admitted in a video produced by the government propaganda laboratories that “the PSUV wants the PCV ticket”.
Of course, this is not a secret: as the elections draw nearer and the rejection to the administration of the President grows, the PSUV strives to neutralize any force that might oppose it in order to fabricate a docile opposition, regardless of the methods used for such a purpose. Hence, we have Henry Parra, someone who has already publicly broken with the PCV at least twice, proclaiming himself a communist again and demanding ta court intervention in the oldest party in the country, as has already happened with other organizations of the left and, of course, of the right.
Parra’s minutes before the television cameras last Monday were not free of ambiguities. His supposed half century of communist militancy did not spare him from inaccuracies if not insurmountable errors. For example, he assured us that he could not go to the “disciplinary tribunal” of the PCV to “ask for justice”; but this body does not exist in the statutes of the PCV party, whose highest forum for the appeal of decisions is none other than the congress itself.
This was not Parra’s only blunder. His repeated invocation to the “grassroots of the PCV”, so often used in governmental jargon, left aside the fundamental and regular organism of political militancy of the communists: the branches. The reason is clear: neither Parra nor his accomplices belong to any of them, since they are not members of the PCV.
The humorous note of the day (which does not make the situation any less dangerous) was that Mr. Parra did not know how to explain his “rescue plan”. Looking to the sides with some anxiety and a tangled tongue, he called himself a member of an “organizing committee” that “had no choice but to resort to the Supreme Court of Justice to file a constitutional appeal”. And what were they specifically requesting? A journalist had to come to the rescue to help him pronounce the phrase “ad hoc leadership”.
But there were not only errors and inaccuracies; he also resorted to lies in his statement. Following the matrices promoted by the Government bots on social networks, Parra denounced a non-existent alliance between the PCV and the extreme right-wing opposition, María Corina Machado. What is the proof or arguments that support such a statement? None, it is just “an idea that is emerging”, he said.
A follower of the Goebbels-like style of PSUV propaganda, Parra assured that the PCV “is unaware of the blockade” and the role of the US policy that “has starved” (sic) the people. However, it is undeniable the role that the PCV has played in the international communist movement as promoter of important campaigns of global solidarity with Venezuela in the face of imperialist aggression. It is also public knowledge that the PCV has demanded jail for all those who have promoted foreign interference in the country or have stolen assets of the nation.
This character pretends to replace the nine decades of anti-imperialist tradition of the PCV with the idiotic mantra of “whatever Nicolás says”. His performance is closer to the puppets who polemicize at times with the government in front of the microphones pretending a false autonomy, but who vote with their feet on the PSUV projects in the National Assembly. Not without reason, some have begun to call him Henry “sell-out” Parra.
