Word: venezuela
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...regional voting in Venezuela on Sunday was ostensibly about gubernatorial and mayoral contests. But for the past decade, every election held in the Western hemisphere's richest oil nation has boiled down to one thing - a referendum on left-wing President Hugo Chávez. The balloting this time was no different. The bottom line: Did Chávez's party win big enough for him to rebound from a stunning defeat in last year's constitutional plebiscite? That vote reaffirmed the presidential term limits that Chávez had hoped to eliminate - and he needed a huge win this...
...United Socialist Party (PSUV) did pick up 17 of 22 state governorships, including Chávez's home state of Barinas, on Venezuela's poor llanos, or plains, where the president's brother Adan held off a strong challenge from a breakaway Chávista candidate. The PSUV also took about two-thirds of the total national vote and kept the opposition from winning the seven or eight states it needed to stun Chávez. If the radical, anti-U.S. firebrand showed anything, it's that his red-beret power and popularity are relatively intact...
Still, though Chávez crowed that his country was back on "the road to socialism," Venezuela isn't quite "dressed all in red" this week. Until the vote, the opposition had held only two governor seats. Of the five it won Sunday, three control some of the nation's largest population centers, including western Zulia state, the heart of Venezuelan oil production and home to the country's second largest city, Maracaibo. Perhaps worse for Chávez, the socialists lost the mayor's seat in the largest city, Caracas, the nation's capital - even after...
...former army paratrooper officer who led a failed coup attempt in 1992 before winning the presidency in the 1998 election (and a special race in 2000 under a rewritten constitution), has benefited greatly from a dysfunctional opposition led largely by leftovers from the old guard that pilfered Venezuela's oil wealth and left more than half the population in poverty; it thwarted Chávez last year only because a more politically adroit cohort of university students led the anti-amendment movement. Even for Sunday's contests, opposition parties struggled to unite behind single candidates and often failed to offer...
...course, there are a few in the world who still claim the end of capitalism is nigh, like the leaders of Iran and Venezuela and Georgia Congressman Paul Broun, who sees Marxism in Barack Obama's mainstream policies. But if the G-20 countries, which represent some 85%-90% of the global economy, are all on board for capitalism's preservation, why does Bush feel the need to defend...