Acting Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro tearfully vowed to complete late Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution on Thursday, while opposition leader Henrique Capriles promised change at emotional rallies to close their bitter campaign.
Maduro was joined on stage by the late leader’s friend, Argentine soccer icon Diego Maradona, who signed and kicked balls to tens of thousands of people clad in red in Caracas ahead of tomorrow’s election.
Parakeets were released and Maduro put one on each shoulder in a nod to his assertion last week that Chavez’s spirit had visited him in the form of a “little bird” — a story the opposition seized on to mock the late leader’s chosen successor.
The final rallies closed a brief campaign that was marked by name-calling, allegations of assassination plots and the transformation of Chavez into a religious-like figure in this politically polarized nation.
Before Maduro’s speech, the crowd sang along as a large screen showed a video of Chavez singing the national anthem in the rain during his last campaign rally in October last year.
Surrounded by his cabinet, Maduro, 50, pledged to fulfill his mentor’s oil-funded socialist revolution, which brought popular education, health and food programs to the poor.
“We, his sons and daughters, will collectively guarantee that this is the case. We swear that the revolution will continue,” he said, calling Chavez “Christ the redeemer of the poor,” one month after Chavez lost his battle with cancer.
“For the love of the poor, I aspire one day to join Hugo Chavez again, my father the redeemer,” Maduro said, struggling to stifle tears. “Long live Chavez! Long live the Bolivarian revolution!”
Maduro, a former bus driver and union activist, who rose to foreign minister and vice president under Chavez, has enjoyed leads of between 10 and 20 percentage points in opinion polls.
A survey by pollsters Datanalisis, published on Thursday by Credit Suisse bank, gave him a 9.7-point lead. The poll was conducted between Monday last week and Friday last week.
Datanalisis president Luis Vicente Leon wrote on Twitter that Maduro’s campaign was “weaker than at the beginning,” but that it was not weak enough for Capriles to catch up.
“It was a very quick, mega-campaign, but the people want to continue the revolution,” said Feliz Oropeza, a 55-year-old housing ministry employee who donned replicas of Chavez’s signature on each cheek and wore a red beret like the late comandante.
While the late leader reduced poverty, he left behind the highest murder rate in South America, with 16,000 homicides last year, and a slew of economic problems, from high inflation to shortages of basic foods despite Venezuela’s oil wealth.
Wearing a shirt and matching baseball cap in Venezuela’s yellow, blue and red colors, Capriles voiced confidence he would win, six months after losing to Chavez by 11 points in the last presidential election.
“Make no mistake, next Sunday is time to open a new cycle and change this situation,” he told a huge rally in the western city of Barquisimeto after the 40-year-old Miranda state governor, who has accused Maduro of unfairly using state funds and television to dominate the campaign, said the government “abuses, intimidates and threatens.”
“This is the time to change Venezuela,” said 50-year-old mechanic Jorge Fonseca, as Capriles supporters held signs reading “God’s timing is perfect” and “This is the moment.”
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese