CARACAS – Retired Gen. Alberto Müller Rojas, considered one of the ideologues of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s Bolivarian Revolution, said in an interview published Monday said he is retiring from politics because “the revolutionary process” has gone wrong.

“We are trading internationalism, which is the characteristic of revolutions, for a petty-bourgeois nationalism that does not live up to the expectations of society,” he told the regional daily Panorama.

Müller, 75, announced during the interview his retirement from the political arena because he is tired of “seeing more of the same.”

As a result of the interview, some media outlets reported that the ex-general had resigned from Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV, but of that there has been no official confirmation.

In a statement published on the Panorama Web site, Müller, who has not appeared for some time at public PSUV events, said that what is happening to the revolution right now “is the worst; what is going on is not healthy for the revolutionary process.”

“We have to talk about socialism, not about individuals nor about labels,” he said, adding that he has not spoken with Chavez since last year.

Chavez named Müller first vice president of the PSUV on March 2, 2008, the day of the official founding of the political party that joined together all the militants of various other parties that were supporting him.

Two years before, in February 2006, and two decades after leaving the army, Müller was called to active duty by Chavez to direct the new presidential security unit.

Müller, who once proposed making use of Venezuelans’ “great capacity for violence,” including “throwing stones,” to deal with a possible U.S. military invasion, has had a number of heated arguments with Chavez. EFE