Venezuela wrestles over truth of bombing claims
Hours after barely winning Venezuela's presidential election, the ruling party started to flood state media with accusations that opposition provocateurs were firebombing Cuban-run neighborhood health clinics across the country in revenge.
More than a week later, a national dispute is raging as the opposition wages a remarkably successful media counteroffensive showing the claims to be seriously exaggerated and in some cases entirely false. With meticulously dated amateur photos of undamaged clinics, opposition supporters have vividly illustrated how cellphone cameras, Twitter and Facebook can help even the playing field against a government that came to dominate broadcast media during the late Hugo Chavez's 14-year presidency.
The fight is fueling tension in a country that's deeply polarized and almost exactly divided between supporters of the government and an opposition that claims the April 14 election was stolen. The chief of national prisons, Iris Varela, declared Tuesday that she was preparing a cell for opposition candidate Henrique Capriles for allegedly directing the purported clinic attacks and other violence against government buildings and supporters.
Chavez had a history of making claims he never substantiated, denouncing dozens of alleged assassination plots before succumbing to cancer in March. His heir, Nicolas Maduro, has shown himself prone to even more grave accusations, including repeatedly claiming in the week before his election that Salvadoran and Colombian mercenaries had entered Venezuela to wreak havoc. The government hasn't presented any evidence to back up those claims.
http://news.yahoo.com/venezuela-wrestles-over-truth-bombing-claims-201218341.html
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