Too long have I failed to mention Venezuela and the growing problems caused by its potentially unstable president, Castro-wannabe Hugo Chavez. That oversight needed to be corrected, as I feel the country, already grown quite problematic, is going to shortly become quite a thorn in the side of regional stability.<\/p>\n
Today, its own stability took a hit, as opposition parties have bailed out<\/a> of congressional elections only five days before the scheduled voting.<\/p>\n Three Venezuela opposition parties have pulled out of Sunday’s congressional poll, accusing the electoral body of favouring pro-government candidates.<\/p>\n The head of the main opposition party, Democratic Action, said they felt the result would be biased against them.<\/p>\n However, Vice-President Jose Vicente Rangel said the party was pulling out because it was facing defeat.<\/p>\n Venezuelans will vote for an expanded 167-seat congress, where supporters of President Hugo Chavez have a majority.<\/p>\n Correspondents say that the government has vowed to increase its majority to two-thirds, which would allow it to pass constitutional reforms that opposition leaders strongly oppose.<\/p>\n Democratic Action chief Henry Ramos said his party was demanding a suspension of the elections until equal conditions existed for parties.<\/p>\n He told a news conference the electoral board had not convinced opposition candidates that the software used in the computerized voting system did not endanger voters’ confidentiality.<\/p>\n He said the decision to pull out had been a difficult one to take at such a late stage in the campaign.<\/p>\n “Imagine what it means to us to say today that under these conditions we cannot participate in the electoral process.”<\/p>\n Project Venezuela and the Social Christian Party, or Copei, later said they too were withdrawing and called for a suspension.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Publius Pundit<\/a> and Gateway Pundit<\/a> bring us stories of rioting breaking out in the oil-rich South American state, both in reaction to today’s news and in opposition to the strongly anti-American Chavez.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Too long have I failed to mention Venezuela and the growing problems caused by its potentially unstable president, Castro-wannabe Hugo Chavez. That oversight needed to be corrected, as I feel the country, already grown quite problematic, is going to shortly become quite a thorn in the side of regional stability. Today, its own stability took […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-south-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/targetcentermass.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}