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polly7

(20,582 posts)
Fri Sep 7, 2012, 03:13 PM Sep 2012

The Chávez Election

By Steve Ellner

Source: Le Monde Diplomatique

Friday, September 07, 2012

“You pay back a favour with favours,” said Joanna Figueroa, a resident of El Viñedo, a barrio in the coastal city of Barcelona in eastern Venezuela. She had pledged to work for the reelection of Hugo Chávez after receiving a house as part of the government’s ambitious Great Housing Mission programme. She helped build it, as part of a “workers team” that included a bricklayer, a plumber and an electrician appointed by her community council. Her job was to mix cement. As Chávez followers keep saying of their feelings towards their president, “You pay back love with love.” The frequency with which the phrase is used shows the deep emotional bond that exists between Chávez and many Venezuelans.

Much is at stake in the presidential election due on 7 October. The opposition’s candidate, Henrique Capriles Radonski, calls himself a reformer, free of any sort of ideology. Even so, he belongs to the conservative Justice First Party (MPJ), which stresses private investment and questions the effectiveness of state economic controls. The opposition has grown wiser since its failed coup in 2002 and its decision to boycott national elections. Now, opposition leaders fervently defend the 1999 constitution — which they opposed at the time, despite its overwhelming adoption in a popular referendum — and have even achieved a degree of unity under Capriles, nominated after a primary in February.

The achievements of the Housing Mission, building thousands of homes for the poor and including barrio residents in their planning and execution, does much to explain Chávez’s lead in the polls. The opposition’s claims that it is winning have a hollow ring: Chávez opponent and media owner Rafael Poleo recently attributed the “barren” results of an opinion poll in May to Capriles’s “failure to go anywhere”. The Datanálisis survey gave Chávez a 43.6% to 27.7% lead over Capriles. It also indicated that 62.4% of voters rate Chávez’s performance as above average; 29.4% consider it poor. Datanálisis is the most credible of the polling agencies with an impressive record. That its findings favour Chávez must annoy its owner, Luis Vicente León, who openly sides with the opposition."


more.... http://www.zcommunications.org/the-ch-vez-election-by-steve-ellner
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Peace Patriot

(24,010 posts)
1. It's great to read an article about Chavez that isn't bullshit 'Wall Street'/CIA propaganda!
Sat Sep 8, 2012, 05:46 AM
Sep 2012

Thanks for posting it!

The author does not suffer from the Ayn Randy-ish hysteria about socialism which drives both opinion and news articles in the Corporate Press. The article is from Le Monde Diplomatique, a publication that I don't know at all, and is authored by Steve Ellner. I don't know him either. Z-Net often publishes news and opinion that we can't get elsewhere.

Eliner makes the interesting point that, with the plummeted popularity of rightwinger Sebastián Piñera in Chile, and the surprising policies of Colombia's Manuel Santos (made peace with Venezuela on his first day in office, is currently making peace with the FARC, has called for drug legalization, supports LatAm unity and sovereignty), only Paraguay remains as a blight on the leftist democracy landscape in South America (rightwing coup ousted the elected, leftist president of Paraguay, using the phony "constitutional crisis" template of the U.S.-designed coup in Honduras in Central America).

I don't feel quite so sanguine about Santos, though he is certainly a relief after Bushwhack mob boss Alvaro Uribe. It seems like the rightwing criminals, here and there, bloodily prepare the ground work for Corporate Rule, which is then presided over by Neo-liberals with smiley faces. What of the thousands of murdered trade unionists and other advocates of the poor, and the brutal displacement of FIVE MILLION peasant farmers, in Colombia, or the hundreds of thousands slaughtered in Iraq? Into the Corporate "river of forgetfulness"! On to the profits from this carnage!

Anyway, here's what Eliner says, in the context of the upcoming Venezuelan presidential election in October:

---

A Chávez victory will feed into the “left tide” in Latin America at a critical moment and will undermine US influence. The record of the left-leaning bloc and its banner of Latin American unity has been mixed recently. In 2009, the right triumphed in the presidential elections in Chile, but the popularity of its president Sebastián Piñera subsequently plummeted. In 2010, centrist candidate Juan Manuel Santos was elected president in Colombia, but he soon rallied to the shared aim of Latin American unity under the auspices of the left, and he has even allowed himself to disagree with Washington on key issues. Only Paraguay, with the removal in June of President Fernando Lugo, is now out of step with its neighbours. --from the OP

---

The article covers many issues that don't get covered anywhere else--including--VERY IMPORTANT--the leaders who are emerging within the Chavez administration, who might take his place should he fall ill again. I haven't heard them listed and described anywhere else. He also mentions the recent poll that shows the huge popularity of the Chavez housing project--which, of course, is WHY the Corporate Press and the rightwing (and rightwingers here at DU) are digging up anything they can find against it.

Very informative article! Thanks again!

polly7

(20,582 posts)
5. Venezuelan Opposition Prepares for Non-Recognition of Chavez Victory
Fri Sep 14, 2012, 06:19 AM
Sep 2012

Dr Francisco Dominguez
Head of the Centre for Brazilian and Latin American Studies at Middlesex University

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-francisco-dominguez/venezuelan-opposition-pre_b_1853398.html

Venezuelans go to the polls on 7 October to elect their president. The main choice is between the incumbent Hugo Chavez and Henrique Capriles Radonski, a right-wing state governor with strong ties to the country's elite.

Yet with more than a month to go, sections of Venezuela's right wing opposition coalition seem to have made up their mind about the outcome. With substantial poll leads for Hugo Chávez they appear to be preparing to decry the official results as a fraud.

Ricardo Hausmann, a key Capriles economic adviser, recently said his campaign will announce their own results to the world before the official announcement is made by Venezuela's independent National Electoral Council (CNE), the equivalent of Britain's Electoral Commission. Their approach seems to be that unless the results go their way, the CNE's official results will be rejected by the opposition.

As Eleazar Diza Rangel, editor of Venezuela's main national newspaper Ultimas Noticias - broadly sympathetic to the anti-Chávez opposition - recently explained the purpose of attempts "to claim fraud at the coming presidential elections of 7 October [would be] in order not to recognise the people's will".


 

Marksman_91

(2,035 posts)
6. Please watch the following video
Sun Sep 16, 2012, 09:13 PM
Sep 2012
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xtjiwd_extreme-world-venezuela_news?start=1

Mind you, it's about 40 minutes long, but well worth the watch.

Let's see if anyone here keeps supporting Chavez after watching it.

I'm Venezuelan myself, lived my whole life in Caracas, and I am just appalled by the amount of people that support him in this site. How about you actually go live in the country he's the president of before making any judgments?

You might've heard about Chávez having ordered the Venezuelan consulate in Miami to be shut down simply because he was butthurt. He plays dirty with elections, and knows that 99% of the people in Florida and its surrounding states would vote against him. Now what was once a small drive for many is gonna be almost a day worth of driving just to vote, since we've all been relocated to vote in the New Orleans consulate. But I assure you, MANY people are mobilizing anyway to go vote there, including myself. It's time we elected somebody new. Chávez had his chance for 14 years now, and he blew it big time. It's time for a change.
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