Venezuela set for poll campaign

Campaigning officially begins on Tuesday in Venezuela, ahead of a presidential election due to take place in December.

Incumbent President Hugo Chavez - who is on a two-week world tour - is set to run for a third term in office.

Opinion polls put support for Mr Chavez at between 50% and 60%, with most of his rivals hovering at around 5%.

This will be the first time in Venezuela's history that a president is seeking a third consecutive term.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5233594.stm

It only lasted until the new constitution was adopted.

with most of his rivals hovering at around 5%.

Wow.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again, if the Opposition would actually PARTICIPATE in the country's democratic processes, and actually RESPECT them, then they would probably win at least a plurality in the government. Hell, the LAST election they BOYCOTTED, and then they turn around and complain that they didn't win any seats in the Parliment. Dumbasses.

Consensus policies and because of their oligarchical tendencies) that in Chavez's first election they kept having to replace their candidate. One candidate that one of the parties (Copei? CD?) picked was a popular former Ms Venezuela who was, IIRC, mayor of Caracas. She had about 30% favorability ratings before the party picked her. Right after being picked, her favorable rating dropped to 5%, IIRC.

You can be sure every care is always taken in the States to allow what people don't know to lead to their misinformation. That little detail makes a lot of difference, too!

The 5%? Shows even more clearly how popular the opposition really is with the REST of the country, and why they knew their candidates in the last election would go down the drain, too, and why they decided to misdirect people's attention from this by simply boycotting the election, and pretending it was a protest against Chavez.

to unify behind a single candidate, much like they did in Nicaragua to defeat the Sandinistas. The US funded and directed the UNO campaign a coalition of opposition parties (even financially supporting the Nicaraguen Communist Party) which resulted in the loss of the presidency by the Sandinistas.

How United States Intervention Against Venezuela Works
CIA Electoral Interventions. Nicaragua as a Model for Venezuela


by Philip Agee

It is no secret that the government of the United States is carrying out a program of operations in favor of the Venezuelan political opposition to remove President Hugo Chávez Frías and the coalition of parties that supports him from power. The budget for this program, initiated by the administration of Bill Clinton and intensified under George W. Bush, has risen from some $2 million in 2001 to $9 million in 2005, and it disguises itself as activities to “promote democracy,” “resolve conflicts,” and “strengthen civic life.” It consists of providing money, training, counsel and direction to an extensive network of political parties, NGO’s, mass media, unions, and businessmen, all determined to end the bolivarian revolutionary process. The program has clear short, medium, and long-term goals, and adapts easily to changes in the fluid Venezuelan political process.

The program of political intervention in Venezuela is one more of various in the world principally directed by the Department of State (DS), the Agency for International Development (AID), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) along with its four associated foundations. These are the International Republican Institute (IRI) of the Republican Party; the National Democratic Institute (NDI) of the Democratic Party; the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) of the US Chamber of Commerce; and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS) of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the main US national union confederation. In addition, the program has the support of an international network of affiliated organizations.

The various organizations carry out their operations through AID officials at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas and through three “private” offices in Caracas under the Embassy’s control: the IRI (established in 2000), the NDI (2001), and a contractor of AID, a U.S. consulting firm called Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) (2002). These three offices develop operations with dozens of Venezuelan beneficiaries to which they contribute money originating from the State Department, AID, NED, and, although no proof is yet available, most probably the CIA. The operations of the first three are detailed extensively in hundreds of official documents acquired by U.S. journalist Jeremy Bigwood through demands under the Freedom of Information Act, a law that requires the declassification and release of government documents, although many are censured when released.

Venezuelan associates of the U.S. intervention programs participated in the unsuccessful coup against President Chavez in April 2002, in the petroleum lockout/strike of December 2002 to February 2003, and in the recall referendum of August 2004. Having failed in their three first attempts, the U.S. agencies mentioned above are currently planning and organizing for the Venezuelan national elections of 2005 and 2006. This analysis seeks to show how this program functions and the danger it represents.
(snip/...)

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=AGE20050915&articleId=955

All of those opposition candidates are due to the paredón any day now!!11!111!! :sarcasm:

It's coming.

ever going to become a dictator, you'd think it would have been after the right wing coup that tried to kill him. Instead, he RESTORED the constitution and asked people to return to their homes and not to go crazy with revenge.

Consequently -- 4 years later -- Venezuela has the highest percentage of citizens believing they live in a democracy, and the highest percentage of people who are satisfied with their government in the world (or was it the western hemisphere?).

I'm very very familiar with the fact that Venezuela is NOT a dictatorship. I'm just waiting for the inevitable "Venezuela is a horrible dictatorship that doesn't allow free speech because they won't allow opposition TV stations to call for the death of the president everyday!!!111!" comments.

Most of the opposition are violating Venezuelan law.