Venezuela believes happiness should be in national interest

For the Venezuelan government, happiness should be in the national interest. So President Nicolás Maduro announced on Thursday that he was appointing a new deputy minister responsible for people’s social happiness.

Among the duties of the new deputy minister will be to supervise the social missions between Caracas and its major ally Havana, which were created under late President Hugo Chávez.

The office will be dedicated to Chávez and 19^th-century liberator Simón Bolívar and will help with the needs of the most impoverished citizens and deal with their complaints, said Maduro, who explained that the new ministry was the brainchild of his wife, Cilia Flores.

Ruling party deputy Rafael Ríos will be in charge of the new office and will be assisted by Chávez’s former doctor, Julio César Alviarez, who helped treat the former president before he died from cancer on March 5.

“We must take these missions to heaven as a gesture of thanks to Hugo Chávez,” Maduro said in a live address from Miraflores presidential palace.

The first so-called missions were established in 2003 at the urging of Fidel Castro a year before Chávez faced a heated recall referendum that the opposition demanded after he reached the midway point of his second term in office. They comprised of Cuban doctors going into Venezuela’s poorest neighborhoods and offering free medical services, programs for the elderly and educational opportunities for students.

The concept also strengthened Chávez’s popularity, and Maduro wants to repeat its success at a time when Venezuela is facing severe food shortages, high inflation, rampant crime, and currency devaluations.

Maduro’s announcement also comes ahead of important municipal elections on December 8 in which the opposition has been calling on Venezuelans to demonstrate their rejection of the government’s policies. Maduro has proclaimed December 8 in honor of Chávez and asked the armed forces to on that day instruct their troops to focus on the writings and political theories of the late president.