NewsMax Wires
Monday, Nov. 22, 2004

Story Continues Below

  As Chavez moves to further centralize power and advance what he calls his revolution for the poor, the risk that extremists will turn to violence was underscored by the assassination Thursday of a state attorney who was intending to prosecute supporters of the failed 2002 coup. Meanwhile, what Chavez calls the "democratic opposition" is at a nadir.

"The opposition has no legitimate leadership. Not at this moment," said Alberto Garrido, a leading Venezuelan political commentator and author of several books on Chavez. "We'll see if the opposition finds ways to develop a leadership. It will be a very slow process."

Chavez, a former paratroop commander who tried to gain power in an unsuccessful 1992 coup, has done very well using democratic means instead to install his "Bolivarian revolution," named after his idol, Latin American liberator Simon Bolivar.

First elected president in 1998 and re-elected in 2000, Chavez won the August referendum that sought to oust him by a 60-40 percent margin. In October, pro-Chavez candidates swept all but two of Venezuela's 23 governorships in regional elections. He is next set to strengthen his sway over parliament in congressional elections in July.

Opposition in Trouble

With Chavez vowing to win presidential elections scheduled for 2006 and govern until 2013, the opposition sees itself in deep trouble.

"One of the great political challenges facing the country is how to politically channel the enormous energy of the opposition, which is in a state of confusion," said El Universal, a Caracas daily, in an editorial last week.

The newspaper went so far as to suggest new opposition leaders be found and that the old guard be quietly dumped, sacrificing their political careers in favor of a greater need.

"A political leader is not made overnight and no politician who has become a well-known leader will surrender his position and public profile just like that," El Universal said in the editorial on Thursday. "But all of this can be managed if there is an awareness of the need for a change of message, and the will to carry it out."

Enrique Mendoza, one of the best-known opposition leaders, has kept an uncharacteristically low profile since he was ousted as a state governor last month in the regional elections, beaten by former Vice President Diosdado Cabello, a strong Chavez loyalist.

Mendoza was heard from only after prosecutor Danilo Anderson was killed in Caracas on Thursday night by two powerful bombs that blew up his car as he was driving it. Mendoza warned that Venezuelans must guard against an escalation of violence and should settle their differences peacefully.

"The confrontation of ideas forms part of the enrichment of democratic values of a society," Mendoza said in a statement faxed to The Associated Press. "And under no pretext can we permit that our country becomes submerged in spiraling violence that wounds all of its citizens, regardless of their politics."

Many of the 3.6 million Venezuelans who voted for ousting Chavez in the referendum feel there is nothing more they can do.

They accuse Chavez of polarizing this South American nation by vilifying the rich while pumping the nation's oil wealth into food, health and education programs for the majority poor, seeking to retain their votes in future elections. They are also upset that he is so close to Fidel Castro while alienating the United States with his verbal attacks on the Bush administration's foreign policy.

Isabel Yanez, the owner of a formal wear shop in the huge, upscale Sambil shopping mall in eastern Caracas, is bitter after the two-month strike in 2002 cost her a lot of revenue but failed to dislodge Chavez, as did the other efforts by the opposition.

"Chavez has got all the power now," Yanez said, disgust clouding her features. "The ball is totally in his court."

© 2004 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Editor's note: