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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-27-11 02:04 PM
Original message
Chavez opponent foresees fanfare homecoming
Edited on Mon Jun-27-11 02:35 PM by Judi Lynn
Chavez opponent foresees fanfare homecoming
Andrew Cawthorne
Reuters
10:35 a.m. EDT, June 27, 2011

CARACAS (Reuters) - The opposition front-runner ahead of Venezuela's election next year wants President Hugo Chavez fit and healthy again for a fair fight.

Henrique Capriles Radonski also believes the mystery over Chavez's surgery in Cuba could simply be a ploy to heighten speculation about his condition -- thus maximizing sympathy and political gain from a "triumphant" return.

"There's been a great lack of information. And it looks deliberate," Capriles told Reuters of the rumors around Chavez's June 10 operation and prolonged stay in Havana.

"I picture him coming back saying the 'gringo' media had him dead and the Venezuelan opposition wished his death. It's quite the reverse, and I say it as an aspirant to the post."

More:
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/nationworld/sns-rt-us-venezuela-chaveztre75q37h-20110627,0,774847.story

http://www.correodelorinoco.gob.ve.nyud.net:8090/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Henrique_Capriles_Radonski-150x248.jpg

Henrique Capriles Radonski

http://a4.l3-images.myspacecdn.com.nyud.net:8090/images01/106/ba8ac259879d587a620d7a1c272b8f78/m.jpg

Judge Alvin Valkenheiser
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rabs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-27-11 02:56 PM
Response to Original message
1. Interesting guy, this Capriles




If he gets the opposition nomination, it could turn out to be a close race. He's only 38 years old.

Capriles is from one of Venezuela's traditional wealthy families. His tactic now is to copy social programs that Hugo Chavez instituted years ago.

----------------

BY CHARLIE DEVEREUX

Henrique Capriles Radonski, whose family members own Venezuela’s biggest movie theater chain, is emerging as President Hugo Chavez’s strongest rival in 2012 elections by copying his favorite ploy of lavishing public money on the poor.

Since defeating a Chavez ally to become governor of Miranda state in 2008, Capriles has set up more than 70 free health clinics in poor neighborhoods and provides subsidized food to poverty-stricken families. His government also offers slum dwellers micro credits to improve their homes.

These programs have helped the 38-year-old become the most popular of potential candidates in next year’s presidential race, according to a poll by Caracas-based Consultores 21. His actions exemplify a new generation of politicians seeking to defeat Chavez by emulating policies that have kept the self- proclaimed socialist in power since 1999, said Michael Shifter, president of the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

“There’s clearly been an evolution in strategy,” Shifter said in a phone interview. “Before it was just ‘get rid of Chavez,’ and now there’s a recognition that there’s a reason why he has been in power for 12 years and retains considerable support despite such disastrous governance.”

Capriles last month declared his intention to represent the Justice First party in a Feb. 12 primary that will select a single, coalition candidate to run in next year’s election.

Ahead in Survey
He had 55 percent support in a survey of 2,000 people taken by Consultores 21 from March 11 to March 25. His closest rival, Leopoldo Lopez, a former mayor of the Caracas municipality of Chacao, had 49 percent while Chavez had 45 percent support, according to the poll, which had a margin of error of 2.24 percentage points.

http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/chavez-foe-sees-imitation-as-path-to-venezuela-presidency/




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Judi Lynn Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon Jun-27-11 08:57 PM
Response to Reply #1
2. Appreciate getting this info on Capriles. Hmmmm. Very strange, isn't it?
If you can't beat'em, pretend to join 'em?

That could get painful watching the oligarchs go through the motions of claiming to want to improve the whole country's condition, rather than theirs alone.
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Peace Patriot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Jun-28-11 01:16 AM
Response to Reply #1
3. I think, with DC-based "Inter-American Dialogue," we're getting CIA strategy/"talking points"
pretty much straight from the fax machine, and Inter-American Security Watch is even worse--look at the stomach acid they are re-vomiting at their site--MARY ANASTASIA O’GRADY, SIMON ROMERO, et al. Check it out...

http://interamericansecuritywatch.com/category/venezuela/

-----------------------

So here is the new CIA strategy for getting rid of Chavez and his enormous influence in the region, and ending real democracy in Venezuela...

“Before it was just ‘get rid of Chavez,’ and now there’s a recognition that there’s a reason why he has been in power for 12 years and retains considerable support despite such disastrous governance.” --from the OP (quoting IAD)

"Disastrous governance"? What a joke, as well as being a "Big Lie"! We must look to our own country and to its toady governments in Latin America for "disastrous governance." Colombia. Honduras. Mexico. Haiti. And the U.S. bankrupt with THREE wars!

In any case, this is Leon Panetta and his subtler strategy for enslaving Latin American workers and looting Latin American resources, in service to the transglobal corporations and war profiteers who run the U.S. government. Bushwhack belligerence wasn't working. In fact it was a colossal failure, on a par with the U.S. "war on drugs." We saw this new, classic "divide and conquer" strategy at work in Peru's recent election, with leftist Humala at least giving lip service to the crap about "centrism" and how he isn't really all that close to Hugo Chavez. Some people think this was a smart strategy--a winning strategy. I found it appalling and I think it's why the Peruvian election was so close--with the daughter of heinous fascist dictator almost winning it. The poorest of the poor sat out the election, depriving Humala of what should have been a 60% or better margin of victory--the typical margin of victory for Chavez allies (in Brazil, in Bolivia, in Ecuador, in Nicaragua, in Uruguay, in Argentina, etc). The very poorest 10% in Peru have been entirely left out of U.S. "free trade for the rich." That's how it goes in U.S.-dominated countries like Peru. But now that Chavez and Lula da Silva and their allies--who have soundly rejected U.S. domination, and have started creating prosperity in Latin America, especially in South America--the LOOTERS want to LOOT IT.

Venezuela was recently designated "THE most equal country in Latin America" on income distribution, by the UN Economic Commission on Latin America and the Caribbean, and Brazil and others have also been working hard on the poverty issue as well as using resources--such as oil--for social programs, and now the transglobal "privatizers" and World Bank loan sharks and "neo-liberal" thieves of "the commons" and the liars of the corpo-fascist press and their local fascist allies, WANT BACK IN. Just as they are doing here, they will destroy public education, public health care, labor unions, decent wages and benefits, fair taxation, regulation of banksters, polluters, war profiteers and other scumbags, and democracy itself.

They can't afford Oil War IV (on the Pentagon's Big Dartboard) and South America in particular has become unified against U.S. interference--with Chavez having led that awesome and historical and region-wide movement for independence. That is why they hate him so much--and why they hate, though they don't admit it, the people of Venezuela who have elected him time and again. He stands for UNITY and he furthermore stands for real democracy, as Lula da Silva has acknowledged. Both things must be smashed, one way or another, for the transglobal looters to regain their wrongful control of Latin American resources and governments.

It took them 40 years, here--starting with Reagan--to destroy the "New Deal." First, with relentless propaganda, decade after decade. And now with corporate-run 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines all over the U.S. It may not take them that long in Latin America, because Latin America's "New Deal" is more recent and Latin American democracy is also more recent and possibly more fragile. If a two-faced, CIA vetted and trained snake like Capriles succeeds, mark my words, the next thing that will happen is that Venezuela will lose its transparent, verifiable, 'OPEN SOURCE' code vote counting system. Vote counting will be privatized, as here--and that will be that. The fascists will be back in power, and locked in. Venezuelan democracy will be over--just as it is here. And the transglobal fascists will begin to dismantle the entire regional alliance that has devoted itself to unity, to "raising all boats" and to Latin American independence.

That. is. the. plan.

While South America's "New Deal" is certainly new, and while Latin America is only just recovering from half a century of U.S.-supported fascist dictators, I do have hope that the leftist democracy movement that Chavez has led has considerable strength. It is very broad-based and deep. And Latin Americans, having been through so much horror, are much more sensitized than our people are to the dangers of fascism, and of course to the dangers of U.S. corporate/war profiteer control. And they have done very brilliant work, indeed, on the basics of democracy. But I have seen what corpo-fascist propaganda can do here--putting an entire, once very progressive, once very democratic people to sleep on the most fundamental basis of democracy: transparent vote counting. This precedent is very ominous. We should be learning lessons from Latin America on how to recover our democracy. But the opposite could happen--that they will lose democracy as we have, first to propaganda, then to direct corporate control of election results.
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