Outbreaks of violence and hardball campaign tactics are intensifying in Venezuela as tensions rise ahead of presidential elections due on October 7.
Clashes between rival supporters resulted in stone-throwing, arson and as many as 20 injuries on Wednesday as supporters of President Hugo Chávez attempted to prevent opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski from attending a rally in the coastal city of Puerto Cabello.
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“Those actions aren’t spontaneous. There’s someone responsible for those actions,” Mr Capriles told supporters after reaching the rally by helicopter and a motorboat driven by local fishermen that enabled him to bypass a roadblock set up by Mr Chávez’s supporters to prevent access to the airport.
“It is him, and I say this directly: it is you who wants this scenario, you who wants to spread fear, you who wants Venezuelans to continue fighting each other,” said Mr Capriles, addressing Venezuela’s socialist leader without using his name.
Jorge Rodríguez, Mr Chávez’s campaign manager, said government supporters “have a right to protest and demonstrate freely” against Mr Capriles’ visit, blaming his rival’s supporters and local police controlled by the opposition for the violence.
The worst flare-up since campaigning began in July followed warnings by Mr Chávez earlier this week that Venezuela could descend into “civil war” if he lost the election. He claimed that a document the opposition insists is fake shows that Mr Capriles was secretly planning “neoliberal” reform policies that would be widely rejected if he wins.
“The rich have their families, fine houses, good vehicles, probably an apartment at the beach, properties and so on ... Does a civil war suit them? Not at all. It only suits the extreme, fascist right embodied by the loser. It’s in the interests of the peace-loving rich for Chávez to win,” said Mr Chávez.
Although the election campaign has seen less violence so far than some had feared, there have been sporadic outbursts. Only last weekend Mr Capriles was forced to cancel a march in a poor Caracas neighbourhood, claiming that Mr Chávez’s supporters had threatened violence.
Both sides have also accused each other of engaging in dirty campaign tactics.
On Thursday, pro-government lawmakers produced a video showing a prominent opposition politician apparently accepting a bribe from an anonymous businessman. Mr Capriles swiftly expelled him from his movement, but said that the government was “desperate” to smear his name.
Mr Chávez accused the opposition last week of hyping reports of a massacre of 80 Yanomami Indians in the Amazon by Brazilian gold miners, after investigations suggested that the alleged slaughter did not take place.
The opposition, in turn, accused Mr Chávez’s supporters this week of attempting to bribe members of outlying parties to abandon the opposition alliance.
The incident at Puerto Cabello coincided with the release on Wednesday of a report written by Patrick Duddy, a former US ambassador to Venezuela, predicting that in the run-up to the elections Venezuela “could experience significant political unrest and violence that lead to the further curtailment of democracy in the country.”
The report, published by the Council on Foreign Relations, said that although Mr Chávez has pledged to respect the election result, the “most plausible scenarios for instability and conflict in Venezuela derive from the premise that the Chavistas will not willingly surrender power and would be willing to provoke violence, orchestrate civil unrest, or engage in various forms of armed resistance to avoid doing so.”
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