[From "The 10 Victories of President Maduro in 2016"]

In the longest and hardest year, in which many thought he would fall, President Maduro, overcame all obstacles and proved his exceptional ability as a Statesman writes Ignacio Ramonet

In early 2016,Venezuela’s authorities had very difficult problems to solve. Namely, 1) the neoliberal opposition had won the legislative elections of 2015 and controlled the National Assembly, 2) the price of oil, the main export of Venezuela, had fallen to its lowest point in decades, and 3) US President Barack Obama had signed an executive order that declared Venezuela to be an “unusual and extraordinary threat to the US national security and foreign policy”.

That is, in three decisive areas (political, economic and geopolitical), the Bolivarian revolution seemed to be playing defensively. Meanwhile, the counter-revolution, both internal and external, seemed to have power at its fingertips.

Furthermore, Chavism had been under media attack since Hugo Chávez had arrived to power in 1999. The negative propaganda had intensified since April 2013 and reached unseen levels of violence after the election of President Nicolás Maduro.

This permanent aggression by the media created and propagated such a level of disinformation about Venezuela that it even confused many friends of the Bolivarian revolution. In particular because, in this “post-truth era”, lies, intellectual fraud and deceit aren’t sanctioned with any sort of negative consequence, not even in terms of credibility or image. Anything goes, everything that’s useful to achieve an end is valid in this era of post-factual relativism, and sometimes not even the most objective facts or pieces of data are enough to disprove false statements. Denounces against this strategy are ridiculed by media as “conspiracy theories”, and an obsolete element of an “old narrative” that has no basis.

As I was saying, all odds seemed to be against the President of Venezuela in early 2016. The head of the National Assembly, opposition member Henry Ramos Allup even dared to say, emboldened by the Parliamentary majority they had achieved, that he would oust Maduro “in less than six months”. He was undoubtedly inspired by the institutional coup that had ousted President Dilma Rousseff in Brazil, and hoped to achieve a victory in the revocatory referendum.

That was the state of affairs when President Maduro, in a masterful series of moves that nobody had predicted —and that were perfectly legal according to the Constitution— surprised everyone. He renewed the members of the Supreme Court of Justice (SCJ), whose Constitutional Court has the last word when it comes to interpret the Constitution.

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Last but not least, we must recall some of the brilliant victories that Venezuela obtained in the geopolitical arena. For example, it prevented the Organization of American States, which is dominated by Washington, from condemning Caracas by invoking the Democratic Charter against Venezuela.

It also reaped success at the XVII Summit of the Non Aligned Movement that was held in September 2016 in the country, with the attendance of many heads of State and of government, and representatives of 120 countries that expressed their solidarity with Venezuela.

The main victory of President Maduro in this area was the unprecedented deal between OPEC and non-OPEC countries to coordinately reduce exports of oil. To achieve this, Maduro made many international tours.

This historic agreement, signed in November 2016, immediately stopped the drop in oil prices, which had been plundering since mid-2014, when the price was at 100 dollars a barrel, to 24 dollars in January. Thanks to the agreement, the price hiked to 45 dollars by the end of December 2016.

In the longest and hardest year, in which many thought he would fall, President Maduro, overcame all obstacles and proved his exceptional ability as a Statesman. And as a trustworthy leader of the Bolivarian revolution.