Venezuela on the road to normalcy?
Venezuela may soon be free of Chavez, praise God.
Venezuela's marathon man looks to run down Chavez
Henrique Capriles, an opposition leader who runs marathons in his spare time, hopes to give Hugo Chavez a close race in elections next weekend, reports Philip Sherwell.
Soaked by rain and perspiration, Henrique Capriles retreated reluctantly inside his campaign bus as the horn-blowing, flag-waving convoy crept through the pot-holed streets of the slums of Maracaibo, Venezuela's second city.
A late evening tropical thunderstorm had finally forced him from his place atop a pick-up truck after a typical 12-hour day of rapturous rallies and rock-star receptions for the dashing 40-year-old opposition leader.
Undeterred by the downpour, the exuberant crowds outside chanted his name as firecrackers erupted in the pitch-darkness that is graphic testimony to the failure of the country with the world's largest oil reserves to deliver electricity to its own poor.
In Venezuela's presidential elections on Sunday, Mr Capriles faces one of the toughest challenges in global politics - defeating Hugo Chavez.
The socialist autocrat dominates the airwaves and is tapping the state's deep oil coffers to fund his campaign and "buy" votes with a calculated explosion of investment in populist social programme in the weeks before the vote. [...]
Does Cuba's 'road to freedom' run through Caracas, Venezuela?
Some polls are beginning to indicate that Capriles is by now well ahead of Chavez. Chavez is giving him a helping hand too, in one of his recent speeches in eastern Venezuela he said something like: I can understand you may be angry because of power failures, because there may be no water in the tab, because of pot holes in the streets, but those are not the issues, the issue is saving the Nation(Patria). Needless to say that hasn't helped his campaing. Responses in internet have ranged from fairly civil: the man is crazy to HDP (SOB), loco del carajo and so on.
j alvarez,
I don't doubt that Hugo Chavez is trailing Capriles in the polls, but I extremely doubt he'll give up power.
Chavez will rig the election results and will deny the opposition the win and will use the corrupted Venezuelan Army and his special militias to control the situation.
Why do you think Chavez made Venezuela leave the Human Rights Commission a short time ago?
To dissociate his government from any criticism of the human rights violations surely to come when he tries to impose his Socialism of the 21th Century dictatorship on the Venezuelan people.
Hugo Chavez will make this move right after the elections when he'll declare himself the winner regardless of the election outcome. We'll see how the Venezuelan people react to this move and whether they revolt or not. You must understand that the Venezuelan opposition cannot count on President Obama's support.
The next few days will be very interesting to watch how the Venezuela presidential election will unravel.
I would dearly love to be wrong, but I can’t see Chávez stepping down no matter how people vote. He’ll either rig the election results or create whatever crisis he has to in order to stay in power. The OAS is beyond useless, and the other Latrine nations will back him or stay on the fence. So will most of the first world, as they did with Honduras. I remember the phrase of a Cuban dictator (Machado): “You don’t get rid of me with bits of paper,” as in votes (he was soon ousted, but by force). Chávez thinks the same way.
asombra,
You echo my suspicions...
Plus the Castro brothers have too much at stake in Venezuela to just let it go to the opposition.