RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Both Nicolás Maduro and his Vice President of Planning, Ricardo Menéndez, announced the launching this Friday, September 20th, of the XV National Census of the Statistical and Geographic System that will comprise two stages: the survey of real estate information and, later, the family census.
According to what was detailed, in the first stage, the existing properties in the country will be counted, be it houses, shops or premises, which will be labeled with a QR code containing all the information.
“The Bolivarian Militia, the Poder Popular (the communal councils and the pro-Chávez UBCH brigades of the PSUV and Somos Venezuela, Maduro’s party) will be the main body of census takers deployed in the national territory”, Minister Menéndez explained.
Lawyer Luis Manuel Aguana denounced in the Panam Post website that this is a repetition of the infamous case of Luis Tascón, who seized the data from the census forms to brand some four million Venezuelans who were against Hugo Chávez and were excluded.
The pro-Chávez officials have already begun conducting the census, but Aguana spoke out in defiance and proposed “not to open the door for them”. He refuses to allow the regime to obtain such personal data, how many people live in the house, how many rooms there are, what type of house they own.
“This has worsened because in this stage of destruction of Venezuela, the pro-Chávez are going for the homes of the four million who have fled the country for humanitarian reasons and of those who have remained,” said the lawyer.
Aguana maintains that the regime will seize the properties of those who have fled to make up for those who still need protection in the country, in a multimillion-dollar expropriation, which is reminiscent of what happened in Cuba in 1960, when private property was forcibly expropriated.
Elías Santana, the director of Condominios.com, told Clarín newspaper that a letter has been written to the minister demanding an explanation on the controversial census.
“We want him to explain why they have anticipated 2021 when the next census is due, and why the legal officials of the National Statistics Institute are not involved, but rather the political officials of a ruling party like the PSUV that is ineligible from any standpoint to carry out a census”.
Santana pointed out to Clarín that the Statistics Institute should do the census and not the ruling party. “The census should be conducted in 2021 by INE officials. And not by activists of the pro-Chávez popular power such as the UBCh units of the PSUV (Pro-Chávez Bolivarian Units) and the Somos Venezuela party that Maduro founded”.
In the event that Minister Menéndez does not reply to the letter, Santana proposes that Venezuelan citizens appeal to “conscientious objection,” a device contemplated in the Venezuelan constitution, to circumvent the census and prevent the pro-Chávez group from entering their homes to confiscate their property.
(Source: Clarin Newspaper)