Posted on 09/28/2007 10:36:04 AM PDT by Chi-townChief
There's nothing unusual about a mayor being trailed by a bodyguard -- unless, that is, he needs to be protected from assassins working on behalf of the president of his own country. But then, Leopoldo Lopez of Caracas is not your usual mayor and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is not your usual president. Lopez -- 36, educated at Harvard's Kennedy School of Public Policy, and mayor of Chacao, one of five municipalities within Caracas -- has emerged as one of the most visible challengers to the increasingly authoritarian Chavez regime. That's a dangerous undertaking. Lopez recounts three assassination attempts -- the most recent last year, when 12 shots were fired at his car, six of them killing his bodyguard. ''He died in my arms,'' recalled Lopez, in Chicago this week for a conference of mayors from North, Central and South America.
An investigation traced the attack to the government and identified a suspect, Lopez says. But the suspect was released after one hour with the case manager in the attorney general's office breaking into tears when she told Lopez, ''This is bigger than what I can handle.''
Chavez has proved to be more than a lot of people can handle. He first tried to seize power in a 1992 military coup; it failed but he survived and thrived. Elected president in 1998, Chavez survived a coup attempt when he tried to claim extra-constitutional powers. One of the leaders of massive street protests then was Lopez, though he distances himself from the actual coup. That's when the threats against Lopez started.
In the years since, Chavez has only increased his stranglehold over Venezuela. He nationalized its telephone and electricity companies, shut down the main anti-government broadcast network, imposed price controls on basic foods and threatens to take over private schools that don't heel to his socialist ideology. An admirer of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, Chavez uses Venezuela's oil wealth to meddle in the affairs of neighboring countries and foment anti-Americanism.
Now he proposes rewriting the constitution to keep himself in office as long as he wants, to turn some elective offices into presidential appointments, to seize control of the central bank and to essentially wipe out private property.
Meanwhile, homicide and kidnapping rates have soared, with Venezuela displacing Colombia as the most dangerous society in Latin America. As you might expect in a country on its way to becoming a police state, homicides by police are up sharply. According to Transparency International, which monitors government corruption, Venezuela ranks behind only Haiti as the most corrupt nation in Latin America. In contrast, Lopez's municipal government gets high marks.
Lopez was elected to a second term as mayor of his district -- described by the Los Angeles Times as the wealthiest in metropolitan Caracas and by Lopez as mostly middle class -- with 81 percent of the vote in 2004. That encapsulates his threat to Chavez: ''I can win elections.''
Besides the threat of violence like the assassination attempts and the time he was kidnapped for 10 hours by armed thugs, Lopez must fight off the legal power of the state to silence him. One Chavez agency banned him from running in another election until 2017 on bogus charges of financial mismanagement. Other Chavez officials have filed 26 charges accusing Lopez of everything from campaign finance offenses to ''ecocide'' for replanting nine trees to make room for a school. Passage of the constitutional rewrite in a vote later this year, probably Dec. 9, Lopez says, would institutionalize as ''enemies of the socialist state'' those who advocate an alternative to Chavez's authoritarian society.
''We're willing to take that risk,'' says Lopez. While conceding a Chavez victory is probable, he adds, ''It would be a mistake to see this as a now or never thing. The sun will rise after Dec. 9. I'm committed to what I'm doing, to our cause, to the fight for democracy.''
shuntley@suntimes.com
My guess is that Lopez’s life expectancy has just now plummeted to days if not weeks.
Good luck to him.
Not for winning the presidency, but for enjoying his last few days.
A new proud socialist achievement, adding to the already massive list of people killed in the name of socialism. The American left is very happy! We’ll no doubt have to jail this overblown jackass and bailout the country!
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