16-04-2013, 08:40 AM
Magda Hassan Wrote:Following the script perfectly.
Quote:Nicolas Maduro has narrowly won the Venezuelan presidency, but opposition leader Henrique Capriles has refused to recognise the results.
Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles has refused to recognise the election victory of acting President Nicolas Maduro in the race to succeed late leader Hugo Chavez.
"Today's loser is you," he told a news conference early on Monday, referring to Maduro, adding: "We won't recognise a result until every vote has been counted."
Chavez's hand-picked successor, Nicolas Maduro, won by a razor-thin margin in the special presidential election, edging Capriles by only about 300,000 votes, electoral officials announced.
Maduro, acting-president since Chavez's death, held a double-digit advantage just two weeks ago, but electoral officials said he got just 50.7 per cent of the votes to 49.1 per cent for Capriles.
Chavistas set off fireworks and blasted car horns as they cruised downtown Caracas in jubilation.
Maduro addressed a crowd from the presidential palace. He called his victory further proof that Chavez "continues to be invincible, that he continues to win battles".
He said Capriles had called him before the results were announced to suggest a "pact" and that Maduro refused.
Maduro, a longtime foreign minister to Chavez, rode a wave of sympathy for the charismatic leader to victory, pinning his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of government largesse and the powerful state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated.
Capriles' main campaign weapon was to simply emphasise "the incompetence of the state" in handling the world's largest oil reserves.
Millions of Venezuelans were lifted out of poverty under Chavez, but many also believe his government not only squandered, but plundered, much of the $US1 trillion ($A956.62 billion) in oil revenues during his tenure.
Venezuelans are afflicted by chronic power outages, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages, and rampant crime - one of the world's highest homicide and kidnapping rates - that the opposition said worsened after Chavez succumbed March 5 to cancer.Quote:Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela's acting president says he has evidence that the US tried to destabilise the OPEC member nation. Venezuela's acting President Nicolas Maduro has said his government would provide "new direct evidence" of US interventionism in his country after he cast a vote in his bid to succeed Hugo Chavez.
Maduro, who was handpicked by Chavez to lead his nation, expelled two US military attaches the day the leftist leader died last month, and he accused former US officials of hatching a plot to kill him during the campaign.
"There are always difficulties with the United States because they are always plotting," he charged after voting in the presidential election pitting him against opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
"Tomorrow (Monday) we will present new direct evidence of interventionism in the domestic situation of Venezuela by US embassy officials," the former foreign minister and vice president said.
Shortly before he announced Chavez's death on March 5, Maduro had accused the two US military attaches of trying to recruit Venezuelan military officers to destabilise the OPEC member nation.
"What would happen if ... a Venezuelan military attache at the embassy in Washington started looking for soldiers in the Pentagon to reject (President Barack) Obama's authority or raise arms against Obama?" he said.
The two nations have not had ambassadors posted in each other's capitals since 2010.
Maduro said Venezuela was "always willing" to have better relations but that it would depend "on them respecting our country."
The United States expelled two Venezuelan diplomats in a tit-for-tat move last month. Nine days later, Caracas suspended an informal "channel of communications" with Washington.
The two nations have had chilly ties since Chavez took office in 1999, but Venezuela still exports 900,000 barrels of oil per day to its northern neighbour.
Aye. A "democratic" election is always the right time to get the right result ---- for those on the right.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
Carl Jung - Aion (1951). CW 9, Part II: P.14