Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has moved to clip the wings of Venezuela’s opposition following its partial victory in local and regional elections last week.
The government launched legal actions against senior opposition figures and a television station and tried to weaken newly elected opposition governors and mayors.
The president, claiming his socialist revolution was in peril, also threatened to mobilize the military should his foes step out of line.
“The revolution is armed and prepared to counter those who may attack the people. We won’t show them mercy,” he said.
Chavez accepted electoral defeat in major urban centers but the martial rhetoric signaled a rough ride ahead for his emboldened opponents.
The former soldier said his opponents were “little Yankees” who were plotting with Washington to overthrow him: “It’s part of a plan. They are coming for me. They want to try to topple me.”
Manuel Rosales, the new mayor of Maracaibo, was hauled before a congressional hearing on Friday to be questioned about corruption claims. A criminal charge has been revived against another victorious candidate, Henrique Capriles.
In a separate move, control of a Caracas police force has been shifted to central government.
The president has also proposed appointing regional commissioners who would challenge the authority of state governors.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
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