Chavez Miami Foes Hire Planes to Vote in Venezuela Race [View all]

[naaman fletcher]

We haven't heard from PP yet about this Chavez election tactic of making it hard for his opponents to vote

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-25/chavez-miami-foes-hire-planes-to-vote-in-venezuela-race.html

Alicia Rodriguez so dislikes President Hugo Chavez, and blames him for making her native Venezuela unsafe, that the 80-year-old retiree is flying 1,300 miles from her adopted home in Miami to cast a vote against him.

She’s not the only one. In what’s shaping up to be Chavez’s toughest election battle yet, Venezuelans who’ve fled to Florida since he took power in 1999 are mobilizing on the Internet to oust him from office. At least two groups have pledged to transport thousands of voters by chartered planes and buses to a polling center run by Venezuela’s consulate in New Orleans so they can cast ballots on election day, Oct. 7.
Enlarge image Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez frequently taunts the Venezuelan community in Miami, calling them “fugitives” in reference to opponents and one-time allies who’ve relocated there fleeing prosecution. Photographer: Juan Barretto/AFP via Getty Images
Enlarge image Venezuelan Presidential Candidate Henrique Capriles





Just 2 percent of Venezuelans in Florida voted for the self-declared socialist leader in his 2006 landslide victory, official results show, meaning that expatriates may provide an edge to opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski in a tight race. Still, for the largest community of Venezuelans living outside their homeland, exercising the right to vote has been hampered by Chavez’s decision to close Venezuela’s consulate in Miami over U.S. charges of spying.

“We’re happy to go and do our bit to support Capriles,” Rodriguez, who plans to travel with her older sister nursing a bad back, said in a phone interview. “It was deceitful of Chavez to close the consulate in Miami because he didn’t want us to vote.”