Tag Archives: politics

Mar
2
2012
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In Case You Missed It… Articles Roundup Week of 3/2/12

In this week’s roundup… Rumors surround Hugo Chávez’s health as conflicting reports emerge following his operation in Cuba; Chávez’s absence triggers discontent among the country’s military ranks; MUD candidate Capriles’ youthfulness could play to his advantage in the October presidential elections if Chávez’s condition worsens. Price controls continue to increase the country’s soaring inflation, hurting food production and industrial output; Venezuela continues to send aid to embattled Syrian president Bashar Assad despite international sanctions; public and private investments fall to 10.3 percent, below 2008 numbers; and anarchy reigns in the Venezuela penitentiary system due to a lack of government oversight.

Chávez Surgery Revives Speculation, The Wall Street Journal

Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez, who is running for re-election, was in good condition after undergoing surgery overnight in Cuba to remove a pelvic lesion near where surgeons had removed a cancerous tumor last year, Vice President Elias Jaua said on Tuesday.

Hugo Chávez’s illness triggers new reports of discontent, fear in the military, Boston Herald

President Hugo Chávez’s illness has deepened the internal fissures of the Venezuelan Armed Forces, an institution that never integrated into one unique block of support of the Bolivarian Revolution and whose members have for months shown signs of concern and discontent, according to internal reports by the private intelligence company Stratfor leaked by WikiLeaks.

Chávez Surgery Opens Venezuela Election Chances For Candidate Henrique Capriles, The Huffington Post via the Associated Press

Throughout his presidency, Hugo Chávez has relied on his vigor and endurance: playing baseball, speaking for hours at a stretch and making decisions on the fly while bounding around Venezuela exuding energy.

Chávez’s Cancer Mystery: What if Venezuela’s President Doesn’t Run for Re-Election?, TIME
Lent, the pre-Easter season that started last week, is traditionally a time when Christians ponder their mortality – and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez had a lot of it to contemplate before he left Caracas for Havana to undergo more cancer surgery.

Chávez’s health makes an impact on Venezuelan foreign policy, El Universal

Since last September, Colombian Ambassador to Venezuela Alfredo Curé has been waiting for a meeting with Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez to produce his credentials accounting for the official notice of the beginning of his mission in the country.

Chávez, his friends and life after death, The Financial Times

One of the more interesting lines of speculation about Hugo Chávez’s deteriorating health and possible death is what it might mean for the socialist Venezuelan president’s many foreign allies.

Venezuela’s New Price Controls Order Cuts Of Up To 25 percent, Fox Business

The Venezuelan government will cut prices on a slate of basic goods up to an average of 25 percent as part of a long-awaited first wave of broadly expanded price controls that officials say will combat the country’s soaring inflation, Vice President Elias Jaua announced Monday.

Agricultural balance still in the red, El Universal

World food prices will continue playing a key role in goods availability in the Venezuelan market in 2012. While the value of some commodities, including sugar, cereal and oil, dropped at the end of 2011, international organizations fear that prices this year will continue above the average.

Venezuela’s aluminum and steel production below 1997 numbers, El Universal

Official statistics reveal that the output of the subsidiaries of the Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) and private manufacturing, of the essence to diversify exports and supply raw materials to the rest of the economy, is seriously shrinking.

Venezuela sends fuel to Syria, no plans to halt shipments aimed at aiding Assad regime, The Washington Post via the Associated Press

Venezuela has been sending diesel fuel to Syria and the government of President Hugo Chávez has no plans to halt the shipments, the country’s energy minister said Tuesday.

Public and private investment 10.3 percent below 2008 level, El Universal

Thanks to raising oil prices, the Venezuelan government is able to inject a significant dose of public spending and the economy takes again the road of growth.

Venezuela’s Gladiators, The New York Times

Two men with knives face off in a pit. Hundreds gathered around are egging them on, while on the walkway above others are picking their winner and placing bets.

 
Feb
21
2012
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American Jewish Committee Condemns Anti-Semitic Rhetoric in Venezuela Presidential Campaign

And yet another Jewish advocacy organization – this time The American Jewish Committee (AJC) – has condemned Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez’s recent anti-Semitic attacks against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski.

In a press release issued Monday, the AJC decried the “steady, systematic barrage of attacks” the Chávez-controlled media has directed at Capriles’ Jewish heritage. Capriles, a practicing Catholic and the grandson of Polish Jews who fled Nazi persecution, has been the target of malicious character assaults by Chávez-friendly media.

Chávez’s allies have sought to exploit anti-Semitic prejudice and fear by calling Capriles an advocate of “international Zionism which threatens to destroy the planet.” At the same time, they have disparaged his Christian faith, likening Capriles’ membership in a Catholic group to participation in a “neo-Nazi” sect.

“In December 2008, Chávez joined with Argentine President Cristina Kirchner and Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in a statement against discrimination and racism,” said AJC Executive Director David Harris. “Not for the first time, Chávez has made a mockery of this pledge. By his intolerant and anti-democratic actions, he has proven that he is a key part of the problem, and not, regrettably, the solution.”

The recent attacks against Capriles were also condemned last week by the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who called the attacks “hatemongering” and said that Chávez’s failure to stop them “would be an endorsement and encouragement of racism.”  The Anti Defamation League also expressed its outrage at the attacks.

Chavez, who in 2009 called the Israeli government “genocidal,” has also sparked controversy by cultivating a friendship with Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier who has called for the destruction of Israel.

These recent, vicious attacks suggest Chávez, who many consider to be in his worst political shape since he gained power in 1999, is genuinely worried about the enthusiasm and high voter turnout seen in the opposition primary. “This is characteristic of this government,” said Ramon José Medina, a coordinator for the opposition coalition known as the MUD. “The government is in attack mode after seeing three million people vote in the primary.”

To read the entire press release from AJC, click here.

 
Feb
21
2012
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ICYMI: Chavez faces an Uprising at the Ballot Box

Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez faces an uprising at the ballot box
The Washington Post
By Jackson Diehl
February 19, 2011

On Feb. 12, Henrique Capriles Radonski, a 39-year-old Venezuelan state governor, won a primary election to become the opposition’s candidate against Hugo Chavez in October’s presidential election. He won 1.8 million of an astonishing 3 million votes – double the turnout predicted by most analysts.

The next day, Capriles, a devout Catholic, was greeted by a commentary on the government-run Web site of Venezuelan National Radio titled “The Enemy Is Zionism.” Capriles, it explained, is the descendant of Jews. (In fact, his grandmother was a Holocaust survivor who emigrated from Poland to Venezuela.)

“In order to understand the interests embodied” by Capriles, the commentary declared, “it’s important to know what is Zionism, the Israeli ideology that he sneakily represents. . . . It is, without doubt, an ideology of terror, of the most putrefied sentiments of humanity; its supposedly patriotic impetus is based in greed.” And so on.

“Zionism,” it concludes, “is owner of the majority of the financial institutions of the planet, controls almost 80 percent of the world economy and virtually all of the communications industry, in addition to maintaining decision-making positions within the U.S. Department of State and European powers.”

Thus began the latest – and what will surely be the ugliest – political campaign by Chavez, a ruler who has served as a friend in need to Moammar Gaddafi, Bashar al-Assad and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – and who now is facing his own homegrown democratic uprising. But Venezuela’s spring differs from those of Libya, Syria or Iran: Instead of pouring into the streets, Venezuelans – fed up with the chaos and violence of Chavez’s 13 years in power – are marching to the polls and trying to restore the country’s crippled and compromised institutions.

The opposition Capriles now heads has learned lessons that might benefit some of the revolutionaries of the Middle East. It tried and failed to oust Chavez with mass demonstrations and strikes; it foolishly boycotted elections it believed would be unfair; it indulged in endless internal quarrels. The result was the entrenchment of a strongman who has thoroughly wrecked what was once Latin America’s richest country and who now presides over the highest inflation and murder rates in the Western Hemisphere, shortages of basic goods and power, and a drug-trafficking industry whose kingpins include the defense minister.

Click here to read more.