MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Ideologue of “Chavez revolution” abandons “petty Bolivarian bourgeois” party

Retired General Alberto Müller Rojas has a long history of left wing politics

Venezuelan retired General Alberto Müller Rojas considered one of the ideologists of President Hugo Chavez “revolution” announced he was retiring from politics because the current Venezuelan “revolutionary process” is in a dreadful state.

Interviewed by the regional newspaper “Panorama”, which is aligned with the administration of President Chavez, the former officer, (75) said “we are changing internationalism, the essence of revolutions, for a petty bourgeois nationalism that does not represent the expectations of the Venezuelan people”.

“I’m tired of seeing the same, I’m retiring from politics” said the veteran general who until the announcement was Vice-President of President Chavez ruling party, United Socialist party of Venezuela, PSUV.
“Every thing that is going on isn’t healthy for the revolutionary process.”
“We should be talking about Socialism, not about names or brands” he added admitting he hasn’t talked or met with Chavez “for over a year, I’d say”.

In the Panorama interview Muller said that too many officials and members from the PSUV have become petty bourgeois and “they love to show off” with their life styles. International press has labeled Chavez supporters, “Boli-bourgeois”, an acronym of “Bolivarian revolutionaries and bourgeois”.

On March 2, 2008 Chavez named Muller Vice-president of the newly created party, made up of several political organizations. Two years before in 2006, and two decades after leaving the Army, Chavez called him to head the Presidential Joint Staff.

Müller who once proposed taking advantage of Venezuelans “propensity to violence” by organizing groups to stone “US marines when they invade Venezuela” has clashed several times with Chavez.

In 2007 in reply to Muller’s proposal to “politicize” Venezuelan Armed Forces, President Chavez said such “weird” statements “only played to the hands of the revolution’s enemies”.

Muller Rojas also said opposition political parties, which hold substantially less voter support than the PSUV according to opinion polls, had no chance of winning a majority in the National Assembly in the upcoming September elections.

Born in 1935, Muller Rojas has a long history of participating in left wing politics. In 1997 he joined the Homeland for All Party (PPT) and in 1998 headed up current president Hugo Chavez’s election campaign. In 1999 he was designated as Venezuelan ambassador to Chile. In 2008 Chavez appointed him as first vice-president of the PSUV.

He is also well remembered for warning that Chavez was surrounded by a “nest of scorpions,” pointing out then Defense Minister Raul Baduel, who months later went over to side with the opposition.

Muller Rojas has also been very sick lately, frequently relying on a wheelchair.