MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Transparency International denounces “Venezuelan apartheid”

In some cases, it has been denounced that the Homeland Card forces beneficiaries to vote under the supervision of some official authority

NGO Transparency Venezuela denounced through a follow-up that the Carnet de la Patria (homeland card), identity document devised by the government of Nicolás Maduro, is a tool of social control that seeks, among other purposes, the loyalty to the ruling party at the polls.

The Homeland card was presented in its beginnings as an instrument of food rationing to combat an “economic war”. However, since its launch in early 2017, such contradictions have been found in statements by officials who have fueled the controversy surrounding this tool.

Transparency Venezuela thus titled its work about the Homeland Card as “The revolutionary apartheid”.

The NGO quoted some Chavismo leaders at the beginning of 2017 when the project that would unify the missions - social plans created by former President Hugo Chávez - was presented through a Personal Card equipped with an electronic QR code. President Nicolás Maduro maintained at that time that ”(...) with the Homeland Card a new Social Government will be established, because without the missions we are nothing“.

For his part, the minister for the Communes Aristóbulo Istúriz said that the card ”will serve to detect the needs of the population“; for Jorge Rodríguez, Mayor of Caracas, ”the Carnet will allow the transformation of the Government in technological matters ... and a powerful tool to understand scientifically and truthfully and precisely each of the achievements and achievements of the Bolivarian revolution.“

According to Article 21 of the Venezuelan Constitution, ”all persons are equal before the law and no type of discrimination will be allowed.“ Under that fundamental precept stands ”the imposition of presenting that card to access goods and services that the State is obliged to offer without distinction“ denounces Transparency Venezuela.

In recent months, as the humanitarian crisis -in the country in which at least one child dies a day due to malnutrition- progresses and, according to Consultores 21, at least 4 million Venezuelans have emigrated and thousands are in refugee status , the use of the Carnet de la Patria has become more flexible; so that it can be used to collect pensions, access the public health system, obtain some food or to get the various bonuses announced by President Maduro. In which tries to benefit young people, elderly and pregnant women giving devalued money in the middle of a hyperinflation that is in more than 6,500%.

These rewards given in the form of bonuses on the eve of an election year to those who carry the card are not in vain. Each user is registered in a single system which depends on the national executive, which in turn controls the civil identification agencies and social missions or programs that empower community councils backed by government party officials. This apparatus is sensitive, since when arriving at electoral scenes, the beneficiaries are forced to vote under the supervision of some official authority and the right to free and secret vote, highlighted in the Constitution of Venezuela, is violated.

According to Nicolás Maduro, it is an element that aims to elevate the organization ”of popular social power“. However, under the secrecy in the management of the resources invested in this electronic card and in the programs that precede it, Transparency Venezuela considers that it is an apparatus that is already used to ”knee the citizens, disrespecting their most elementary rights.”