Tag Archives: Chavez opposition

Mar
11
2013
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ICYMI: Venezuela Opposition Leader Capriles to Run Again

Wall Street Journal
March 10, 2013
By Ezequiel Minaya

6c728791bba8150e6d126b707b7f2d5d e1363036562600 ICYMI: Venezuela Opposition Leader Capriles to Run Again

Courtesy of: Agence France Presse

CARACAS—Venezuela opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who challenged the re-election bid of former President Hugo Chávez last fall, announced Sunday his candidacy in snap elections set over the weekend for April 14 to replace the late president.

The 40-year-old governor of Miranda, Venezuela’s second most-populous state, will be pitted against acting President Nicolás Maduro, who was tapped by Mr. Chavez as his preferred successor before his death last week. Mr. Capriles blasted his rival in remarks broadcast on state television, accusing Mr. Maduro of lying to the country about the timing of the death of the president—who hadn’t mad a public appearance since December—and using the loss for political gain. “Nicolás lied to this country,” Mr. Capriles said, referring to the acting president by his first name. “You submitted the country to a lie. I don’t play with death, I don’t play with pain.”

Mr. Capriles, who some analysts say was nonconfrontational during much of his run against the notoriously combative Mr. Chávez, has taken a tougher tone with Mr. Maduro from the outset. “Are those tears sincere?” he asked of Mr. Maduro, who has paid several emotional tributes to Mr. Chávez since his death March 5.

In a fiery televised response to the governor, Mr. Maduro, standing in front of a framed photo of the late leader, called his counterpart “miserable” and said he was trying to incite violence.

“He has committed the biggest error in his history,” Mr. Maduro said of Mr. Capriles. He also noted that Mr. Chávez’s family holds the right to take legal action against the governor for his comments, without offering details.

“Now if all of these [opposition parties] come out to back this serious offense, well, that’s a declaration of war,” Mr. Maduro said. He insisted however that the country had to maintain peace.

Mr. Capriles, a law graduate and former national legislator, lost to Mr. Chávez in Oct. 7 elections by 11 percentage points, capturing 44% of ballots. Though unsuccessful, Mr. Capriles posted the best showing ever against Mr. Chávez, who succumbed to complications linked to his battle with cancer of nearly two years.

No opinion surveys have been released tracking a possible Maduro-versus-Capriles contest since the death of Mr. Chávez at age 58. But a poll last month by local pollster Hinterlaces showed Mr. Maduro, who many expect to benefit from a sympathy vote amid the passing of his mentor Mr. Chávez, beating Mr. Capriles 50% to 36%, with the remainder undecided.

Election authorities have designated only 10 days for campaigning, a short time frame that likely favors Mr. Maduro, who is backed by the formidable electoral machine of the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela, or PSUV. The candidates have both planned to visit the national election board on Monday to make their decisions official. Mr. Capriles added that he will launch a tour of the country on Tuesday.

During the heated presidential contested last year, the opposition coalition of roughly 30 parties that backed Mr. Capriles, known by its Spanish acronym MUD, filed more than a 100 complaints with election authorities accusing Mr. Chávez of skirting electoral norms with lengthy appearances on state broadcasters and using public workers as part of his campaign, among other allegations. Venezuela’s National Electoral Council, seen by many as aligned with the PSUV, declined to open an investigation into the Chávez camp and responded to only a handful of MUD complaints.

A youthful sports-fan, Mr. Capriles has described himself as a center-left lawmaker who draws inspiration from the “new left” policies of former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Detractors of Mr. Capriles have accused him of aping the populist style of Mr. Chávez to disguise allegedly far-right leanings.

Mr. Capriles endured a barrage of near-daily attacks from state media and government officials during last year’s presidential run, including accusations that he was both a Zionist agent and a neo-Nazi sympathizer. Mr. Capriles, a practicing Catholic, has Jewish ancestors, some of whom fled Europe during the Holocaust.

Venezuelan law calls for new elections within 30 days if the presidency is vacated within the first four years of a six-year term. In his final public appearance in December, Mr. Chávez backed the 50-year-old Mr. Maduro as Venezuela’s next leader if a new vote was required.

Mr. Chávez never revealed the exact type of cancer he suffered. During the president’s three months out of the public eye, Mr. Maduro and other government officials insisted on various occasions that Mr. Chávez was showing improvement and remained at work.

Mr. Maduro, a former bus driver and union organizer, was foreign minister for six years beginning in 2006 before being named vice president last year. He is considered a hard-line Chávez loyalist. He has, nonetheless, been praised by fellow diplomats for being an approachable representative of a government that is often provocative and strident in its anti-U.S. sentiment. Mr. Maduro, who delivered an emotional eulogy for Mr. Chávez on Friday, took the oath of office hours after the funeral services and named the late president’s son-in-law, Science and Technology Minister Jorge Arreaza, as vice president.

Many analysts doubt, however, that Mr. Maduro can match the outsize personality and charisma that helped Mr. Chávez dominate Venezuelan politics for 14 years. And it remains to be seen how Mr. Maduro will perform in a high-profile election, having had most of his political posts coming by way of appointment. Mr. Capriles, in contrast, is a veteran of several prominent showdowns, including an upset victory to capture the Miranda statehouse in 2008 over incumbent Diosdado Cabello, an influential Chávez ally who is now president of the National Assembly.

To read this article at the Wall Street Journal, please click here.

 
Jul
12
2010
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Challenging Chavez’s grip on Venezuela: More on Globovision

This blog was originally published by the Washington Post.

During one of his interminable appearances on national television, Hugo Chávez demanded to know last month why Guillermo Zuloaga, the majority owner of Venezuela’s last opposition television station, was not in jail. “How is it possible that he can accuse me of such things and walk free?” the strongman demanded.

The answer is fairly simple: Zuloaga’s statements about Chávez were hardly criminal, and years of government investigations had turned up nothing else prosecutors could plausibly use against him. But that, of course, was not the response of Chavez’s henchmen. Within days of the broadcast, an investigation against the businessman that had been abandoned was reopened; charges were filed. On June 11, a judge ordered Zuloaga arrested and confined to one of the country’s high-security prisons.

By then, the 67-year-old owner of Globovision, an all-news channel that is now the only alternative in Venezuela to government propaganda, was no longer in the country. Like Globovision’s minority owner, another businessman whose bank was taken over by the government three days after the arrest warrant, Zuloaga sought refuge in the United States. Last week he and his son, whose arrest was also ordered, were in Washington, where they were considering making a request for asylum.

“It never crossed my mind that I would be forced to live someplace besides Venezuela,” Zuloaga told me in an interview. “But I can’t be of much help to anyone if I am in a high-security prison. And I think it’s public knowledge that all of the institutions of justice in Venezuela are controlled by the president.”

Zuloaga’s own cases offers vivid proof of that. Judges who have dared to rule in his favor have been summarily fired; charges have been blatantly concocted to serve Chávez’s whim. The case that forced him into exile concerns not the criticism the caudillo complained of but a claim that the broadcaster, who also owns a car dealership, was guilty of “hoarding” his inventory — a charge so ludicrous that Chávez’s own attorney general had dropped it, before scrambling to revive it after the televised diktat.
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The attack on Globovision betrays Chávez’s desperation. Alone in Latin America, Venezuela’s economy continues to plunge sharply downward; inflation is at 30 percent; violent crime is soaring. Zuloaga’s journalists have devoted much of their attention in recent weeks to a scandal concerning the spoilage of tens of thousands of tons of food imported by the regime — at a time when shortages of basic goods are widespread.

Worst of all for Chávez, an election — for the National Assembly — is scheduled for Sept. 26. Five years ago a foolish opposition boycott turned the congress into a rubber stamp for Chávez. This year, having hammered together a unity list, the anti-Chávez forces think they could win a majority of the seats. That’s certainly what polls show. The outstanding question is what the government will do — beyond a district gerrymander that has already been imposed — to skew or steal the election.

Silencing Globovision appears to be the beginning of Chávez’s answer. “Legally there is no way the government can close Globovision,” Zuloaga said. “But that doesn’t mean there won’t be an arbitrary decision. Chávez has been trying in any way he can to control the screens of Globovision. They want to inspire fear more than they want to win votes, because they know they have run out of money to buy votes with.”

The crackdown is not without risk. Globovision, seen in more than 2 million Venezuelan homes, is popular. The government’s shutdown of another opposition broadcaster, RCTV, in 2007 provoked nationwide demonstrations and gave birth to an opposition student movement. Already, the arrest order against Zuloaga has caused considerable international condemnation, including from the U.N. rapporteur on free expression and the State Department, which called it “the latest example of the government of Venezuela’s continuing assault on the freedom of the press.”

Zuloaga says Globovision will go on, “as if we are going to be on the air forever.” He, meanwhile, will hope that Chávez cannot do the same. “I really believe what is happening in Venezuela is unsustainable,” he said. “I don’t think people can accept that the quality of life continues to do down the drain. How can that keep on happening?”