Opposition leader wants to debate Venezuela's Maduro

[naaman fletcher]

http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSBRE92D0YC20130314?irpc=932

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition leader challenged acting President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday to "stop lying" and have a debate, adding that he was sorry if he had caused offense during the increasingly bitter run-up to an April 14 election.

The death last week of socialist leader Hugo Chavez set the stage for the vote pitting Maduro, his preferred successor, against Henrique Capriles, a 40-year-old centrist state governor.

Capriles has enraged Maduro by accusing him of repeatedly lying about the late president's two-year battle with cancer, and of then cynically using his death as a campaign tool. But he apologized if he had upset Chavez's family.

"Let's debate, Nicolas, the country wants us to. We've got a month to do it. Let's debate the insecurity and the economy ... . The country wants you to stop lying and debate the problems and their solutions," Capriles told a local radio station.

[COLGATE4]

1. No way in hell will Maduro agree to debate

just as Chavez wouldn't. They prefer to hide behind scurrilous attacks through government media than actually let the people see an actual debate of ideas and personalities.

[joshcryer]

5. Heh, they can't allow Capriles 1 hour of time on all stations.

That would destroy Maduro.

[ocpagu]

2. Will he bring the talking points of his former association, Tradition, Family, and Property...

... or will this compromise his disguise of "centrist", "moderate leftist", "social democrat", etc?

[naaman fletcher]

3. Who knows?

I hope there is a debate though

[joshcryer]

4. Disguise? Do you have evidence he doesn't want to do what he says?

He's already called for the Missiones to be enshrined into law. Throughout the last campaign, actually. Do you think he's dishonest on that count?

I would like to see evidence for Capriles' supposed ulterior motives. I don't see neoliberal policies implemented in Miranda State where he has been governor since 2008 and as Mayor of Baruta from 2000-2008. Why would he change what has worked very well for him and his people in those states now? It makes no sense. That's a long game psyops if you really think that crap. We're talking 13 years of not implementing neoliberal policies, only to go and implement them if he got the Presidency. Insane.

[COLGATE4]

6. Anyone opposed to the policies of Chavez and his

acolytes is by definition a 'neoliberal' (if not actually a fascist, capitalist, 1%er, oligarch or some other perjorative). Not enough that between the sympathy factor for Chavez plus the orchestrated use of state resources to plug Maduro's message 24/7 that Maduro is almost certainly going to be elected- there's always the fear on the part of the Chavez adorers that, somehow, just somehow the Venezuelans might actually decide that they've had enough of the 'Bolivarian revolution' and decide to elect someone else. Thus, the knee-jerk response by the Chavez adoring brigade to any post which even factually challenges Dear Leader and/or his followers.

[Marksman_91]

7. And it's unfortunate that we got so many blind Chavistas in this site

Coming from first-world nations, you'd think they'd have the education to actually be a bit more civil towards people who don't disagree with their opinions regarding a certain figure or ideology.

[ocpagu]

9. So...

You're saying that the majority of Venezuelans support Chávez because they are third-world uneducated people?

Poverty was cut by half, living standards for the majority and the self-esteem of the Venezuelan people were definetely improved, and they are called to decide by referendums, including you, a progress toward direct democracy... but you believe majority support Chávez because they are dumb...

Don't you think you lack a bit perspective and that you're being somewhat high-handed, patronizing and bigoted?

[joshcryer]

14. Context was "this site."

So your strawman falls flat. It's a nicely canned response, though. Bravo.

[ocpagu]

17. I guess he can answer himself.

And I guess I know the answer already.

[joshcryer]

8. What annoys me about Chavistas is the oligarchs hate Capriles.

They threw up a little in their mouth when Capriles came out in favor of enshrining the Missiones into law. Capriles whole last campaign was merely about improving Chavista policies, and working where they have clearly failed (corruption, roads, infrastructure, electricity).

People bashed a writer for wanting a skyscraper to be completed but those same people ignored that the chavistas built million dollar mosolems and put money into million dollar race tracks and other unneeded things which could've went to improving Venezuela's infrastructure.

The reason the right wing votes for Capriles is he's not chavista. That's it. They would rather have someone else. María Corina Machado is much closer to a neoliberal and the right wing preferred her to Capriles.

[ocpagu]

10. Well, for a start...

...because he was member of Tradition, Family and, Property, which is an ultra-conservative religious and political organization acting across the Hemisphere and in Europe, that has made everything they could to keep progressive governments away, including by inciting and supporting several coups d'état in Latin America. Because, on top of that, he himself supported a coup against a progressive president and invaded an embassy. Because he has the support of the most obscure right-wing organizations.

He is as right-winger as they get. He probably couldn't do much to implement neoliberalism being mayor or governor, I don't know, will have to research, but he certainly would need to be president to make structural neoliberal changes. And it seems quite clear that those who want a neoliberal Venezuela are on his side.

And the fact is, both neoliberal and right-wingers, and even some people at DU, have the audacity of presenting Colombia as a model... if that's their model, go on Maduro!

[Judi Lynn]

11. I recall learning during the coup that Capriles' group also cut the electricity

to the Cuban Embassy, and blocked their water supply, phones, etc. They also would not allow them to go out for food and supplies and return, and they would not allow anyone to take food and supplies in to them.

That in itself should have been prosecuted.

Filthy ####s. That's as low as anyone could go, for politics, assaulting strangers inside an embassy. Nasty stuff. Had the siege continued, they would have been happy to starve them.

[joshcryer]

13. Capriles was not with the protesters.

They were a random mob of people whom he didn't get under control immediately.

If Capriles was involved with the random mob it would've come to light during the four months he was imprisoned unconstitutionally.

The biggest charge against Capriles was that he didn't use the police to forcefully remove the protesters. Quaint, that.

[joshcryer]

12. He wasn't supportive of the coup.

You do realize that the charges against him were "complicity" because he didn't order the police under his control to attack / disperse the protesters, right? I see no evidence he was behind the Cuban Embassy protests, and while I think it was obviously stupid of him to jump the wall, I saw only good intentions in that act, especially since German Sanchez Otero personally called Capriles to come down there. The fact that he did it tells me he's someone of good character, though at the time bad judgment, he wanted to resolve the problem peacefully. This resulted in a 4 month jail time with charges that were subsequently dropped. It wasn't his fault that the media was basically inciting violence against the Cubans because they were trying to paint a Cuban invasion narrative (the right wing in Venezuela does that to this day). In the end he was absolved of the charge of "complicity."

Chavez claimed that Capriles belonged to "Tradition, Family and, Property," in his youth, as if Capriles had any choice in that matter. Capriles came out and denounced Chavez for digging up family history and attacking him on something so far back as to be irrelevant. Meanwhile the chavistas were playing both angles by saying that Capriles was also a zionist (see: "The Enemy is Zionism," wiped from the government website to which it was posted, but can still be found online), too!

The neoliberals who like Capriles don't understand that his policies would crush the boligarchy since the boligarchs benefit from the central command economy, being that they're the ones who are in charge of getting business done. You take the oil income, you funnel it to rich elites, they get contracts, and the cycle perpetuates. Take them out of the cycle, things change big time.

[naaman fletcher]

15. yes but

Judi "learned" differently. Take your facts elsewhere.

[joshcryer]

16. Eva even says Sanchez invited Capriles in in her book.

Before that, though, she claims Capriles ... incited the aggression ... by having a dialog with the protesters.

Yeah. She said that.

Talking to protesters = bad.

Tear gassing them and dispersing them with violence, presumably, would've been the preferred option.

That's the chavista mindset, for you. It got Capriles 4 months in prison for not being a violent thug.