President Nicolas Maduro’s speech on New Year’s Eve - MPPRE

President Nicolas Maduro’s speech on New Year’s Eve

December is the most beautiful month of the year. It brings the spiritual clarity needed to see with perspective the long road of a small cycle that ends and the steps of a new beginning. It is time to make a balance of what we have lived and plan, what we want to be tomorrow. Both individually and collectively plan, December calls us to examine ourselves, to reflect deeply in order to face future, hopefully. Therefore, when I review 2018 and project our future, the first word that comes across my mind is: Thanks, because a homeland is built with effort, dedication and fidelity, but above all with the gratitude. I want to thank you, woman, man, young boy, good people: to all of you, compatriots for everything we achieved together. Thanks for so much solidarity toward this homeland where we were born. Thanks for your firm commitment with peace. Thanks for your democratic vocation, your national values, for flying the flag and dignity high. And above all, thank you for your irrevocable support making of this revolutionary government a great space for dialogue, social protection and defense of our sovereignty. – Thank you, because with your participation, we shielded our democracy, we strengthened our institutions and we were, once again, an example for the world. We demonstrated that this sacred land, full of history and future, has just one owner: the people of Venezuela. – Thank you, because your confidence was the raw material to build 2,500,000 houses for the Venezuelan family and, in order to take care of you, I will not rest until giving you back the right we all have for a decent and happy home. – Also thank you, because in the middle of the bloodiest aggression against our economy, we stood together in hope and faith to ourselves. We have taken over our economy with a growing plan that laid the foundations, so that 2019 will be a year of truly balance and prosperity. Thanks to people’s creativity we have the Card of the Homeland, the Homeland System of Social Protection and the Petro: Our national crypto-currency. These instruments are defeating obstacles from the old world and provide new solutions to the next challenges in the social, political and economic life of our people. Along with these tools, we will make government performance more efficient on social protection matters. We will also be more efficient to reinforce the engines of productivity in order to leave rentierism that weakened us for more than a century. – 2018 was the year of consolidation of the people’s social rights. Every month, more than 6 million families receive with the CLAP boxes – almost free of charge – staple food every month. More than 120 million food combo packs and CLAP boxes have been distributed to all our people. Thanks to our social protection model, we reached 4,300,000 pensioners. 6 million families were included in the Homes of the Homeland Great Mission. We assisted about 544,952 humanized births and 348,000 women have been benefited from the breastfeeding plan. 1 million people with disabilities have been included in The José Gregorio Hernandez mission. And also more than 1 million children are included in the National System of Orchestras, a world record. In terms of citizen security, we achieved 2,159 Peace Quadrants. – In 2018, there are many reasons to feel that – in this struggle for truth and life – our people will be victorious: as never before, we could include more than a third of the population in our educational system; 3 times more than in the past, this time with a record of more than 10.5 million people in the classrooms: from preschool to university, nationwide. – Thank you, because we have conquered peace and political and social stability. Together we will defend the Homeland. I still get excited remembering when last December 17 more than 1,600,000 militia people were installed; the soldier people who preserve peace and integrity of our territory. – Thank you for the unity. Only together we can defend the achievements, change what does not work and improve our referents: the CLAP, the Jobs for the Youth Plan, the Missions and Great Missions. Everything that is necessary to be created and recreated for the welfare of our people, we can just do it. Only us… Yes. 2018 ended and left us a lesson: difficulty has made us all to be better. We have grown up in values, spirit, convictions and experience. Now, we have skills that we did not recognize before and those capacities that have been emerging in the daily battle will drive us to higher achievements. We have sown with courage and patience and a time of harvest reward and prosperity is coming. I do not have doubts. The people have not failed me and I will never fail you either. Our liberators’ dreams about us were not wrong. Those dreams are now our great truths: independence, peace and unity are the true wealth of a nation, and we were blessed by them. – Then thank you for accompanying this great Bolívar’s achievement, this project which Chávez began to build a century with the same conviction of the father of the Nation. Just thank you for so much dignity and so much love for what is ours. A few hours away from leaving the old year and welcoming the New Year, more than a wish, I want to express my strong commitment with Venezuela. My commitment with you, with him, with her, with the men and women, with our sons and grandsons, in sum: with the heroes and heroines of today and tomorrow. My commitment to ensure the prosperity that we deserve, the happiness that we have reached with effort, the wellbeing for which we have fought day and night and that is written in our destiny and by destiny it belongs to us. In 2019 we will focus on the strict compliance of this Plan (2019-2025 Plan of the Homeland), this path that we collectively built and choose. This socialist model that is also a result of our creation and that put human begins in the center of priorities. For every circumstantial problem there is a structural solution. Two years ago we decreed the end of the landlord culture; it is time to consolidate the Sowing Plan for food security. Produce what we consume: this is a principle of imperative sovereignty.
  • We are going to expand the Vuelta a la Patria Repatriation Plan. All compatriots that have asked to return will have the opportunity to be reunited with their families and come back to the Homeland. They will come back to the Homeland to sow and work with us.
  • Juvenal employment must increase. The Youth is eager to learn and contribute, let us take advantage of that energy to use it in productive and creative processes. Let us consolidate the Youth-employment Plan in 2019.
  • By protecting employment, let us increase national production. Thanks to the implementation of the sovereign sowing, next year we will double our goal of the Local Supply and Production Committees (CLAP, for its Spanish acronyms); in 2019, we will reach 12 million of families, of homes, with God’s favor.
  • The economic war has showed its weapons. Undoubtedly, criminal perpetrators made a lot of harm. But they could not defeat the people’s morale. For this reason, in 2019 it is our turn: we will pass from resistance to offensive, the people alongside their revolutionary government. Our counterattack will be from all the strategic areas of the Productive Venezuela. Increase production of oil through our PDVSA is the priority. Regarding the mining and touristic engine, we will have new sources of richness. Compatriots: We have everything to prosper.
  • I also announce the Beautiful Venezuela Plan; we must fix and smarten our cities up, towns and villages, embellish our public spaces where people meet, live together and make community. We have so much to do and we are going to make it!
I have said so and I will achieve it. I swear. In 2019 we will focus on three work lines:
  • First, the peace of the Republic, of our beloved Venezuela. The peace between us beyond differences. This 2018 I promoted 3 workdays of dialogue, the most important in Dominican Republic with the international support. Unfortunately, an extremist sector of the Venezuelan right boycotted following Washington’s order. I reiterate my commitment to resume frank dialogue with the sectors of the Venezuelan opposition that are willing to continue on the democratic channel. I am deeply convinced that peace is the path, our primary purpose. And of course, peace and good coexistence with sister nations with whom we wish to have relations of equality and respect as dictated by international law. Venezuela is not alone. We have many friends in the world. The relations of cooperation and union with our brothers of the Caribbean and the Great Homeland, the important agreements reached with the giants: China and Russia, as well as with the sister nation of Turkey are proof of it, and they will be strengthened for the wellbeing of our peoples and the multipolar world. We attended a historic event: the inauguration of a Latin-American president in Mexico with whom we predict the best political, economic and cultural relations. After our successful participation in the 5th meeting of OPEC and Non-OPEC Countries in Vienna – when the renovation of the historic oil agreement was achieved – Venezuela will assume the 2019 energetic leadership to precede OPEC and the Organization of Gas Exporting Countries. We will ensure fair prices through sustainable markets for the good of all.
  • Secondly, the definitive and absolute recovery of our economy, the rebound of productive forces of the country, the protection and strengthening of the working people’s income.
  • Lastly, but not less important, the thorough fight against corruption, indolence and bureaucracy.
Nothing and no one will divert us from the path towards victory. 2019 comes illuminated by our glorious past. It is the 200th anniversary of two transcendental moments in our history: The Bicentenary of Angostura, milestone in which the Liberator Father paved the path towards equality, social justice and sovereignty and the Bicentenary of the Battle of Boyacá, where Bolivar conquered the independence of Colombia. The same sword freed us. The same ideal made us a Republic. The same cause made us brothers. We will soon welcome a New Year, a year full of symbols, triumphs and hopes. On behalf of Cilia, my sons, my family, and this humble working president, I wish a Happy New Year for everyone. Happy 2019 beloved Homeland!