Eva Golinger's report (below) on the upcoming 2012 National Elections in Venezuela describes the strategy of the US-backed opposition for defeating President Chávez. In her last paragraph, she notes that President Chávez names Manuel Rosales, Maria Corina Machado, and Henrique Capriles Radonski as possible opposition candidates for the forthcoming elections. We introduce Golinger's report with some background on these potential candidates and the problems they face in Venezuela's 2012 electons.

Manuel Rosales	María Corina Machado	Henrique Radonski

Manuel Rosales ran for president of Venezuela in 2006 and lost in a landslide victory for President Chávez. He was former governor of Zulia and later Mayor of Maracaibo. He was charged by the Attorney General of corruption for stealing $60,000 from tax payers in 2009. While governor, he bought half a dozens ranches and a couple of mansions in Zulia but was unable to account for the money used for these purchases.

Also in 2009 a Geovanny Zambrano, a member of the AUC a right wing paramilitary death squad operation testified that Rosales conspired with the AUC to assassinate President Chávez. Rosales has been commuting between Lima and Panama.

It's difficult to understand how Rosales, under arrest and having fled prosecution can stand as a viable candidate in the 2012 elections. Nevertheless, we often hear the opposition saying, "he'll be back sooner than you think." But if he steps into the country, he faces the same criminal charges lodged against him in 2009. Word is that he's being upstaged among the opposition by current Zulia governor Pablo Perez who was in the US 10 days ago at a forum in George Washington University. Obviously, opposition candidates have to be vetted by the U.S. State Department to be cleared as opposition candidates in Venezuela - and by extension to receive the dollars for their campaigns - illegally of course by Venezuelan law.

María Corina Machado is a founder and former president of Súmate, an opposition volunteer organization in Venezuela. When she was president of Súmate, Eva Golinger discovered through FOIA that the organization received millions of US dollars from Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) to fund the Venezuelan opposition. In February 2010 she resigned from Súmate and won election as a First Justice Party candidate to the National Assembly (congress) in Chacao, one of the strongest opposition electoral districts in Caracas. The opposition reap is around 73% - 80% of the votes there for mayor. It is a municipality and it's people in congress represent the state of Miranda. Chacao, even though it overlaps with Caracas (Capital District) is part of the state of Miranda whose current governor is Henrique Radonski.

Chacao has also been reported to be the wealthiest municipality in all of Latin America. In May, 2005 Machado received a warm welcome from then president George W. Bush in the Oval Office of the White House:

María Corina Machado, founder of Sumate, a US-funded opposition organization meeting with former U.S. President George W. Bush in Washington in 2005.

Henrique Capriles Radonski is a Venezuelan politician, pure and simple. He was mayor of the Baruta Municipality, an opposition stronghold from 2000 until 2008. He was elected as governor of the State of Miranda in 2008.

Radonski was charged with participating in the 2002 coup attempt against President Chávez and fomenting violence in a siege of the Cuban Embassy at the time. At the time of the siege, Radonski and others cut off electricity to the embassy, smashed windows and blocked the Cuban ambassador from leaving. Radonski admitted participation in the siege but claimed that he "helped avert more violence by preventing protesters from storming the Embassy." He was later acquitted of these charges, an aquittal that was later rescinded.

Of course the corporate media here and abroad argue on their behalf claiming that the criminal charges lodged against these candidates are "political," and "trumped up" by the Venezuelan government to prevent the opposition from defeating President Chávez and his political party, the PSUV. Just for laughs - imagine an individual like Radonski participating in a coup against a sitting U.S. president, laying siege on the British Embassy in Washington. It's doubtful that he would have even made it from the street to the jail alive let alone run for president in a later election!

According to Venezuelan public television, there are currently 18 opposition candidates vying for the primary elections on February 12. What should be understood is that there are many factions in the opposition making unity impossible. When asked his view of the potency of the opposition for the elections, President Chávez simply says, “They aren’t unified." "Mesa de Unidad Democratica" (MUD), the opposition coalition has only one thing holding them together - being anti-Chávez. Thus MUD is deceiving its own constituency. In her article below, Eva Golinger cites Celia Flores regarding supposed unity among the opposition:

Please keep in mind that their primary elections will decide not only on a candidate for president but also for the next election of mayors and governors. The infighting has already begun. There are certain factions within the opposition parties who want their people to be accepted as candidates outside the primary election process. Examples include Ismael Garcia, candidate for governor of the State of Aragua and Andres Velasquez, candidate for governor of the State of Bolivar and Manuel Rosales, former governor of the State of Zulia, hiding from prosecution in Peru. They want to be listed as candidates without even gaining the support of opposition voters! This is an obvious negation of internal democracy.

So at the moment, MUD is in disarray while claiming internal unity to be the main plank in their coalition. Their name, "Mesa de Unidad Democratica" is on its face, a deception.

According to the most recent polls, President Chávez' popularity among Venezuelans continues to grow. According to Hinterlaces, a polling firm "seen as closer to the opposition" according to Reuters, reported in September 2010 President Chávez having 42 percent support by Venezuelans. Their poll showed that this increased to 49 percent during the month of November and now they are showing his support is at about 55 percent. Their most recent poll showed that only 22 percent indicated that the next president of Venezuela should come from an opposition party.

The latest poll conducted by the Grupo de Investigación Social Siglo XXI (GIS XXI) showed that 54 percent of the Venezuelan population would vote for President Chávez in the coming 2012 presidential elections and only 23 percent would vote for an opposition candidate.

Despite their support from Washington and by the corporate media, we hear the opposition in Venezuela constant whining that they are being treated unfairly. We hear their cries of Chávez' consolidation of power, control of the media, oppression and political arrests of their political candidates. The corporate media would have you believe that the opposition parties in Venezuela are up against a dictator and have no chance of winning an election. It's all horse manure. The photo below tells us what the Venezuelan opposition are up against and the reason they are so befuddled:

- Les Blough reporting from Venezuela

US-backed candidates in Venezuela announce electoral strategy
Correo del Orinoco
by Eva Golinger
August 5, 2011

Ramón Guillermo Aveledo, spokesman for MUD ("Mesa de Unidad Democrática" or Democratic Unity Panel. President Chávez calls MUD "Mesa de la Ultra Derecha (Extreme Right)" or "Mesa of the United States."

US-backed candidates in Venezuela announce electoral strategy President Chávez, who recently confirmed plans to run for reelection, called the opposition’s electoral strategy “a farce”, terming their coalition the “Roundtable of the United States”

This week Venezuela’s pool of opposition political parties announced plans to create a “unified electoral ticket” for next year’s presidential election in an attempt to garner enough votes to prevent Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez from winning another six-year term (2013-2019) The new opposition “strategy” was unveiled on Saturday when spokesman Ramon Guillermo Aveledo told reporters that the opposition’s Democratic Unity Roundtable (MUD) had decided it will use a “single unitary” electoral ballot in its attempt to defeat Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez in next year’s presidential election.

The opposition’s decision is “a symbol” of the opposition’s “commitment to unity”, affirmed Aveledo, who went on to explain that each of the opposition’s major political parties is likely to maintain its own electoral ballot and that this “unitary compromise” does not apply to elections for mayor and/or governor also expected in 2012.

Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) has yet to announce the exact date of next year’s presidential elections or the dates of next year’s elections for mayors and governors. Suggestions have been made that one single election will be scheduled, allowing voters to elect their national, regional and local representatives all on the same day.

“If a certain party wants to use its own symbols (emblems, colors, mottos) in support of the MUD, that’s fine; just like it’s fine for them to set those symbols aside and join the MUD ticket”, explained Aveledo.

The MUD, which includes an atypical mix of extreme-right, traditional conservative, and frustrated leftist parties was formed in 2008 as an electoral tool aimed at confronting the pro-Chávez United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) in September 2010 National Assembly elections.

The PSUV, founded in 2007, is currently Venezuela’s largest political party with an estimated seven million members. To guarantee Chávez’s reelection in 2012, pro-Chávez forces have begun forming the Polo Patriotico, or Patriotic Pole, a coalition that includes the governing PSUV, the Venezuelan Communist Party (PCV), and numerous grassroots social movements.

WASHINGTON’S CANDIDATES

Cilia Flores, socialist assembly woman and Vice President of the PSUV, responded to the MUD’s recent announcement by asserting that opposition forces are looking to disguise ongoing “infighting” with a “false show of unity”. The opposition’s electoral ticket, she said, “is not singular, nor unified. It’s not even one single ticket, but one more among many”. According to Flores, the MUD presidential ticket is nothing more than another attempt to “show unity where none exists”.

In a televised interview on Monday, Venezuelan Foreign Minister and PSUV Vice President Nicolas Maduro told viewers that opposition parties have one uniting force, “the sectors of transnational power, especially those in the United States” that finance their efforts. Maduro reiterated Flores’ assertions that the opposition seeks to “swindle its own voters” by creating “false illusions of unity” and added that the opposition’s “unity ends up being secured by the (US) embassy”.

The Foreign Minister pointed out that 14 of the opposition’s possible presidential candidates have already traveled to Washington “to ask for its (Washington’s) blessing before launching their presidential bids”.

Maduro went on to assert that Venezuelan President Chávez will win his reelection bid next year because Chávez is united with “the most humble of this country, those who had always been forgotten, those who have awoken as part of this Revolution and those who have now become incorporated into political power”.

DIRTY TACTICS

President Chávez, who recently confirmed he has every intent on running in, and winning, next year’s presidential elections, said the Venezuelan people must “unmask” the opposition’s plans for next year.

According to Chávez, the opposition “claims it’s us (socialists) that are divided” when in fact “they are the ones living through the night of the long knives”. Opposition forces, affirmed Chávez, “are attacking, stabbing each other in the back, as they define their candidates for governor in the states of Aragua, Bolivar, Carabobo, Miranda and Zulia”.

The President also said that opposition spokespeople have “already begun talking about Cubans manipulating the electoral registry, people’s identifications and voting machines”, as a way of trying to promote a perception of electoral fraud, in the likely event Chávez wins.

Beyond the “farce” announced last weekend, said Chávez, the opposition’s plans for next year’s elections include “taking to the streets, creating disturbances and chaos, discrediting the armed forces and claiming that Cubans are somehow in charge”.

“At the hour of our Bolivarian victory”, Chávez concluded, the opposition’s only real plan is “to cry fraud”.

Chávez also pointed out that among his popular base in the PSUV, allied political parties, and grassroots social movements in both urban and rural areas, “we have unity, loyalty, a single political project and an ideology”.

The President also explained that he has already begun outlining his program for the 2013-2019 presidential term, a program which includes “transitioning away from capitalism’s perversity” and overcoming “the cultural, moral damage, the destruction of values, of nationality, of the self-esteem of Venezuelans” caused by capitalist relations of production, distribution and consumption.

In the country’s previous presidential election (2006), Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez won 7,309,080 of the votes, or 62.84%, against the opposition’s Manuel Rosales, who garnered 4,292,466 votes (36.90%).

The opposition’s Rosales later abandoned his post as mayor of Maracaibo and fled the country to avoid charges of stealing public funds, accepting bribes for public contracts and hoarding lands and capital using front names and companies. He currently lives in self-imposed exile in Peru, though he has suggested he might return to Venezuela to participate in the opposition’s presidential primaries set for February 2012.

Referring to possible opposition candidates, including Rosales, Maria Corina Machado, and Henrique Capriles Radonski, Chávez affirmed “those people are incapable of running the country. It would be the disaster of all disasters”.

“They aren’t unified”, affirmed Chávez. “The only thing they are is a threat to this country, and we take it upon ourselves to ensure that they don’t become that threat” by winning the election, said Chávez.

(photo and related comment inserted by Axis of Logic)

T/ COI P/ Agencies

Source: Correo del Orinoco (English)