New political force in Venezuela

Two leading opposition figures in Venezuela say they are forming a new party to take on both President Hugo Chavez and the existing opposition. Claudio Fermin, a former mayor of Caracas, and fellow activist Carlos Melo say their Popular Assembly party will "rescue political discourse".

The move comes more than eight months after a failed opposition bid to end Mr Chavez's presidency by referendum. The vote was the most recent stage in a bitter campaign to unseat Mr Chavez. The president has also survived a coup attempt in April 2002 and a two-month general strike that ended in February 2003. Mr Chavez's opponents accuse him of being a hard-left demagogue who draws inspiration from Fidel Castro's Cuba, while his supporters praise him for improving the lives of the poor with extensive social programmes.

Mr Fermin, a veteran opponent of Mr Chavez, said the new party would be fielding candidates in municipal elections due to be held on 7 August, but did not say how many. He said Popular Assembly was based on grass-roots citizens' communities who would be selecting the candidates themselves. Mr Fermin originally belonged to Venezuela's political old guard as a member of one of the country's two traditional parties, Accion Democratica.

He has twice unsuccessfully opposed Mr Chavez in presidential elections - when the Venezuelan leader first came to power in December 1998 and again when he sought a fresh mandate in July 2000. However, he was one of the few opposition leaders to recognise Mr Chavez's victory in the recall referendum in August last year. The other leading figure behind the new party, Mr Melo, briefly became a hero of the opposition last year, when he was detained on charges of weapons possession before being freed on appeal. Mr Melo maintained that the charges against him were fabricated.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4526245.stm
can't imagine who is behind this

:sarcasm:

Chavez evil Communist Castro bad bad Marxist dictator poopyhead Chavez failed economic evil dictator Communist.

Castro. Castro. Dictator dictator Marxist!

There, that should save a few folks some keystrokes.

Seriously, do these clowns think they're fooling anyone?

He left Acción Democrática because of corruption and neoliberalism... he's a real socialdemocrat who didn't agree with the right wing path his party was taking.

I highly doubt Bush is behind this, since Fermín is much more to the left than most opposition leaders. Sure, he's much more to the center than Chávez, but he's not anti-democracy like most of the other right wingers. In that same article it says he was one of the few opposition leaders who recognized Chávez's victory in the recall.

Nothing wrong with a legitimate opposition. As long as he plays
by the rules, leave him alone.

He perhaps deserves some scorn for allying himself to the rest of the anti-democracy crowd (recalls as a last resort), but it seems pretty healthy that some kind of reasonable opposition develop sooner or later. The coup supporters are a lost cause and any opposition will have to do what he is doing and separate themselves.

I don't think the people of Venezuela are going to take kindly to a foreign special interest sponsored RW opposition party taking these things away from them.

Claudio Fermín is hardly a right winger. Sure, he's much more centrist than Chávez, but he left Acción Democrática in the 90s to run as an independent candidate because he didn't agree with the right wing path the party had taken.