Tag Archives: socialist

Sep
27
2010
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Venezuela Opposition Pushes Back Chavez in Congressional Vote

This article was originally posted by Buisness Week

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez suffered his worst setback at the ballot box since taking office and lost his two-thirds majority in a congressional vote as support for his rule wanes ahead of 2012 presidential elections.

Opposition candidates, who boycotted the 2005 congressional race, secured 52 percent of the overall popular vote, giving them enough seats to force Chavez to negotiate on key decisions, said Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, head of the Democratic Unity Table alliance. Election officials didn’t provide a tally of the overall vote.

Chavez’s party, while securing at least 90 of 165 seats in the National Assembly after redrawing electoral districts, fell short of the 110-seat threshold needed to be given decree powers, approve the national budget and pass new laws single- handedly. Opposition candidates won 61 seats and non-aligned indigenous candidates won 3 seats according to the results announced at 2 a.m. local time, eight hours after polls closed. Another 11 seats remain to be decided.

“This is a tremendous defeat of the Bolivarian project,” said Friedrich Welsch, political analyst at the Simon Bolivar University in Caracas. “Chavez built his campaign on a vote of confidence in his socialist project and the majority of the people gave their votes to forces opposed to it.”

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Sep
21
2010
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Venezuela’s opposition to Hugo Chavez

This article was originally posted by Forexyard

After a terrible year for President Hugo Chavez, knocked by a deep recession, ever higher crime and electricity shortages, Venezuela’s opposition has its best shot in years to regain a national voice in an election on Sunday for a new parliament.

Polls show a tight race, with Chavez’s support at its lowest ahead of an election since he first won office almost 12 years ago. But the socialist leader still has ratings of over 40 percent and his party is favored by new electoral rules.

Winning the popular vote on Sunday would be an important symbolic victory for the opposition and embolden Chavez’s rivals ahead of presidential elections in two years. Following are some facts about opposition leaders and parties:

* Venezuela’s opposition suffers from a lack of leadership. Since Chavez took office, no lasting figure has emerged to oppose him in a country which has a history of favoring charismatic and long-lasting leaders such as former presidents Carlos Andres Perez and Rafael Caldera.

* Chavez rose to power on a wave of revulsion at Venezuela’s traditional two parties who for nearly 20 years failed to pull the country out of economic turmoil. Those parties, Democratic Action and Copei, are now a shadow of what they were when they dominated politics for 40 years.

*About 30 parties and organizations have joined the Democratic Alliance umbrella group ahead of Sunday’s vote, with a strong presence of the old guard alongside newer parties such as First Justice and A New Time.

* After years in the political wilderness, the opposition began to make gains against Chavez in 2007 when it defeated a proposed referendum that would have overhauled the constitution to deepen his revolution and scrapped presidential term limits. A year later, several opposition leaders won important states and city halls in regional elections.

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Sep
13
2010
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Chávez cozies up to private sector ahead of key vote

This article was originally posted by The Financial Times

Never mind the fact that just a few months ago Hugo Chávez declared “war” on the business community. The compensation agreement with Holcim announced today, following a similar deal reached with Casino recently, suggests that Venezuela’s socialist leader is making an effort to show that he does care about the private sector after all.

If so, the reason is clear enough: there are crucial legislative elections later this month, and it looks like the result will be close – so every vote counts. And Chávez knows that many Venezuelans hold their right to private property dearly.

Indeed, the latest survey by local pollster Hinterlaces shows that 64 per cent of Venezuelans disapprove of the way the government runs the economy, largely characterised by nationalisations and intervention in the private sector (in fact, private business is the sector in the country with the third-highest approval rating, after universities and the church, according to the poll).

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