Word: rez
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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After the first two days' returns in the November election showed the opposition Democratic Republican Union (U.R.D.) far in front, Dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez brazenly ordered a "more correct" count. Last week he was able to announce that his official party had won a sweeping majority in the new constituent assembly. Only one electoral problem remained in the way of his expected election as President by the assembly next month, and the colonel dealt firmly with that...
U.R.D. Chief Jovlto Villalba and five colleagues were summoned to the office of Pérez Jiménez' Minister of Government. After a two-hour session during which Villalba stoutly refused to commit U.R.D. assembly members against a boycott until after a party convention in January, secret police seized the six men at the minister's door, held them incommunicado overnight, and next morning shipped them by government plane to Panama. Handed their passports in mid-air by the pilot, the U.R.D. leaders were dumped at Panama without money, a change of clothes or even their toothbrushes...
...Official Returns. Consternation seized green Miraflores Palace, the seat of the government. Junta Boss Colonel Marcos Pérez Jiménez used the confusion to shuck off the other two members of the junta, Colonel Luis Felipe Llovera Páez, Minister of Interior, and Germán Suarez Flamerich, the mousy professor whom the colonels had propped up as President. After two days, Pérez Jiménez got the signed support of Chief of Staff Felix Moreno, and went on the air to declare himself President. He announced baldly that "correct" election returns gave the government...
...rez Jiménez' first crisis arose swiftly. Storekeepers, newsmen, students, and some of the workers for the great oil companies went on a protest strike. He hit back by closing schools through Christmas and threatening to cut off labor's social benefits. "Violence," huffed Pérez Jiménez, "accomplishes nothing...
...through clandestine radio transmitters went new orders to A.D. members: to try to beat the junta, vote for Copei in two conservative regions, and for U.R.D. everywhere else. That was where the totally unexpected landslide of U.R.D. votes apparently came from. It was true that Pérez Jiménez was not yet unhorsed. But through his clumsy seizure of the presidency, he had placed himself and Venezuela further than ever from the democratic respectability they crave...