California recall tame compared with Venezuela's

[jamesinca]

California recall tame compared with Venezuela's
Many say they've lost jobs, grants after signing petition

Phil Gunson, Chronicle Foreign Service Tuesday, October 7, 2003

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Caracas, Venezuela -- The political struggle to remove Venezuela's flamboyant leftist President Hugo Chavez makes California's recall election look like a simple civics lesson.

Unlike Gov. Gray Davis, Chavez, a former army officer who first won the presidency in 1998, has plenty of tricks up his sleeve to stall and even derail the process.

Vanessa Roca, a 31-year-old secretary from the eastern state of Monagas, says she lost her job at a state-owned transport company after signing a petition calling for a recall referendum to remove Chavez from office. She traveled seven hours by bus to ask officials at the National Electoral Commission (CNE) to remove her name from the petition.

"A friend who had the same thing happen to him told me this might help me get my job back," she said. "I understand it happened to a lot of us."

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2003/10/07/MN83080.DTL

[qb]

1. Well, duh... the U.S. isn't inciting a violent coup in California... yet.

[jamesinca]

2. Yet

I will not be suprized if the political fireworks start tommorrow.

[tinanator]

3. Is it true James Carville worked against Chavez?

Seems like I heard that somewhere and have been looking for details ever since. Viva Chavez.

[Freddie Stubbs]

5. It is true

Venezuela's embattled private sector is banking on the colorful U.S. political consultant James Carville to help oust leftist President Hugo Chavez. The hire may herald an effort by the anti-Chavistas to focus more on the issues than on personality.

According to several individuals with knowledge of the matter, a group of business executives contracted with Mr. Carville this year to craft a strategy that will unify a fractious and frustrated Chavez opposition and resonate with voters in a possible recall referendum. The executives are hoping that Mr. Carvillethe folksy, 59-year-old Democratic Party consultant from Louisiana known as the Ragin' Cajunwill push a variation of his "It's the economy, stupid" theme that helped propel Bill Clinton to victory in 1992. But analysts say Mr. Carville and his clients face a formidable challenge.

Mr. Chavez has strengthened his hand since surviving a military coup in April 2002 and defeating a recent two-month national strike led by oil executives, labor leaders and business organizations. Despite a deepening economic recession, the business elite here and its middle-class allies are finding it hard to persuade core Chavez supporters in urban slums and the countryside that the president isn't delivering on his populist promises.

They have another hurdle to jump in blaming all the country's economic problems on Mr. Chavez after their own ill-starred strike accelerated the economy's slide. "These business owners are arrogant. They can bring Carville or anyone else, but they don't stop to understand what everyday life is like for the people," says Patricia Marquez, an anthropologist and academic director of the Institute for Higher Administrative Studies, a graduate school of management here in the capital.

more: http://casavenezuela.org/05persp/articles/economia_stupid.html

[tinanator]

6. thanks a lot!

clearly, Carville blows goats while Satan rests up.

[masmdu]

4. Good Venezuelan News Source...rest of the story not often told by US media

http://www.vheadline.com/main.asp