Venezuela’s united opposition holds a first-ever presidential primary tomorrow to pick its standard bearer to take on incumbent Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez in an October ballot.
The open primary, the first of its kind in the country, will gauge the momentum of support for the opposition Democratic Unity coalition eight months before a showdown with Chavez, the firebrand left-wing leader in power since 1999.
Capriles, a 39-year-old moderate state governor from the center-left Primero Justicia (Justice First) party, currently leads in the polls.
Single and with movie star looks, he governs Miranda State, which includes parts of the Caracas metropolitan area. Capriles’ chances were boosted last month when Leopoldo Lopez, a popular former mayor, dropped out of the race and endorsed him.
Capriles’ main rival is Pablo Perez, 42, of the Un Nuevo Tiempo (A New Era) party. Perez is governor of Zulia, Venezuela’s most populous and wealthiest state.
Both Perez and Capriles say they want to end the country’s deep political polarization and they have pledged to fight poverty. Both have campaigned with a conciliatory message and have avoided directly criticizing Chavez.
They also propose continuing and improving the popular social programs adopted by the Chavez government since 2003, notably in the areas of health and housing.
The other candidates in the race are independent legislator Maria Corina Machado, labor leader Pablo Medina and former ambassador Diego Arria. Unlike the governors, this trio has chosen to aggressively challenge Chavez.
Last month, the opposition parties unveiled a unity platform focusing on free-market economics and emphasizing public safety.
Their manifesto includes an end to price controls, in place since 2003; adopting a competitive currency exchange rate; reassessing Chavez’ creation of a socialist state; and returning autonomy to the central bank.
The historically divided opposition formed the coalition to compete with Chavez’s United Socialist Party of Venezuela in the 2010 legislative elections. The opposition won more than 50 percent of the popular vote.
A staunch critic of the US, Chavez is the main political and economic ally of Cuba, the only one-party communist regime in the Americas.
He has also offered support for other left-wing governments across Latin America.
Capriles says his presidency would inaugurate a “cycle of progress” in Venezuela by using the same model that led to Brazil’s economic boom. He also promises to address Venezuela’s biggest problems, including a dearth of housing, a soaring crime rate and a 28 percent inflation rate, the highest in Latin America.
Like Capriles, Perez said he does not plan to roll back all of Chavez’s policies.
Capriles and Perez have emerged “as favorites precisely because they sought to depolarize the country and refrained from confronting Chavez,” historian Margarita Lopez Maya said. “It’s apparently an electoral strategy that works.”
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
RSS