Venezuela opposition leader shot dead [View All]

[bemildred]

Democratic Action party leader Eva Carrizo was killed in Zulia state, 600 kilometres west of Caracas, when protestors backing a recall referendum clashed with National Guard troops, an opposition lawmaker said.

Carrizo was taking part in a protest in the city of Machique and was killed by gunfire, said regional lawmaker Elias Mata. Mata and other demonstrators told the Globovision television network a National Guard trooper had shot Carrizo.

In the upscale Caracas district of Chacao, Chavez opponents demonstrated against the firing of several judges who ordered the release of demonstrators arrested in protests in recent days. About 350 people were arrested and the opposition said about 40 people were still being held.

Says in another story (Bloomberg) the VP of the stock exchange
is being held for rioting among the 350.

Why a delay in the referendum might be important:

However, if a referendum was held after August 19 and Chavez lost, new elections would not be called. The vice president would assume power until 2006, when Chavez's current term ends.

iafrica.com

Carizzo story is interesting in light of this one in Vheadline:

Out-of-control opposition radicals discovered by intelligence services in conspiracy
plans to assassinate one or more of their own leaders

Movimiento Quinta Republica (MVR) deputy, former National Assembly
(AN) president Willian Lara says that out-of-control radicals in the
loosely-formed Coordinadora Democratica (CD) coalition of opposition
parties have been discovered in conspiracy plans to assassinate one or more
of their own leaders."

Intelligence reports delivered directly to President Hugo Chavez Frias show
well-advanced plans by anti-government conspirators to assassinate several
high-profile (though presumably politically dispensable) opposition personalities
and then to put the blame on President Hugo Chavez Frias as the supposed author
of the crime.

The covert scheme follows the pattern of a success of events which, though
perpetrated by the opposition, have sought to throw suspicion on the
government which maintains that it has kept its hands clean while the rebels
are up to all sorts of dirty tricks after failing in an April 2002 coup d'etat and
follow-up attempts to sabotage the nation's economic life with the sole
purpose of getting rid of reformist Chavez. Flyers claimed to be from left wing communist organizations in favor
of Chavez Frias have been found at the scenes of bombings at diplomatic legations in Caracas last February
(2003) and the opposition continually used the government-hostile media to drum up antipathy at the slightest
excuse.

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=16220