Congress of the Hungarian-Venezuelan Solidarity Association

It was a full house again when the Hungarian-Venezuelan Solidarity Association held its 2009 congress on 20^th September. The event was graced by the presence of Adriana Gottberg, charge d'affaire of the Venezuelan Embassy to Hungary and Soraya Alvarez, the Cuban Ambassador to Hungary. After listening to the national anthems of both Hungary and Venezuela Adriana Gottberg welcomed the Congress and all in the hall.

This was followed by András Simon, poet and translator, who welcomed the annual congress of the Hungarian-Venezuelan Solidarity Association. Congress accepted by a unanimous popular declaration a change to the constitution of the Hungarian-Venezuelan Solidarity Association so that András Simon could hold the post of honorary president of the HVSA.

We listened to two poems presented by our friend, László Bóka. The first was by Ferenc Baranyi: "Let's give it a name", followed by Victor Valera Mora's "I justify this war".

We asked two organisations, closely co-operating with us, to briefly greet our congress. In the last year we succeeded in establishing a good and close working relationship with these two youth organisations. Ádám Galba-Deák the president of the Democratic Network addressed the congress followed by András Bakó leader of the Budapest section of the Young Left Union - Young Communists of Hungary. It was a special honour that Zsolt Török, member of Parliament also conveyed his greetings to our congress.

Many solidarity associations from abroad, left and communist organisations have sent greetings as well as every Venezuelan Solidarity Association, not only from Europe or Venezuela, but from even further afield, like India. We were especially happy to receive the good wishes of Eastern European left and communist parties, youth organisations. It gave us great joy to receive the greetings of the Greek communists, one Czech communist member of parliament as well as several communist members of the European Parliament.

The last part of the congress was taken up by Kinga Kalocsai, president of the Hungarian-Venezuelan Solidarity Association presenting an evaluation of the activities of the last 12 months to those gathered together. "In the last year we published more than 200 items of news and material on our web site, e-mail list, we reacted to biased reporting in several newspapers and even succeeded having our opinion published on occasions. We reached many people and achieved our goal of maintaining the information flow to those people about revolutionary events in Latin America" - said Kinga Kalocsai. She outlined the future tasks of our organisation as well: "I think that it is important to earmark a theme which we could examine in more detail. I feel this theme should be the Latin American trade union movement, factory occupation movement and the situation and participation of the workers in the Bolivarian movement. We not only have to present their struggle and position, but we must focus on the same theme in Hungary as well. We must draw attention to the differences, point out that while the working class of Venezuela consistently moves forward, winning new rights for itself, with assistance from the Venezuelan government, here in Hungary it is the exact opposite that is happening. There is ever increasing exploitation of the workers and unemployment is on the rise. We must make comparisons in other fields too. In the health service and in education. But I feel that it is extremely important for us to deal in depth with one topic and I propose that to be the position of the workers."

Congress elected its new leadership which in effect was reaffirming the majority of last year's leading bodies. The president of the Hungarian-Venezuelan Solidarity Association for the next year is Kinga Kalocsai. The executive members are: Julianna Grant, László Kupi and Péter Székely. The Control Commission members are: Réka Sós, Gábor Finta and Attila Trasciatti.

Congress accepted a resolution, which can be read here. (In Hungarian)

After the official business was over congress was addressed by Francesco Merli from the London Centre of Hands off Venezuela, who outlined the history of factory occupations in Venezuela, the situation of the Venezuelan trade unions and generally about the left in Latin America. This speech, which we hope will open a debate, is available here (in Hungarian). After Francesco's speech there was a long discussion and debate closing the 2009 Congress of the Hungarian-Venezuelan Solidarity Association.

(September 29, 2009)