“Their goal is to kill me,” said Venezuelan Presidential candidate Nicolas Maduro on Saturday during an electoral campaign speech in the northern state of Bolivar. Maduro didn’t shy away from naming names during his speech, claiming that the former U.S. Ambassador to Venezuela, Otto Reich, and the ex-ambassador to the Organization of American States, Roger Noriega, are the driving force behind an assassination plot aimed at destabilizing Venezuela less than a week before presidential elections.
“Roger Noriega and Otto Reich are involved, as well as the Salvadoran far right that has contracted hit men,” said Maduro during his speech. “They know they cannot beat me in fair elections.”
The announcement follows reports that Venezuelan authorities captured two saboteurs last week, who are suspected of trying to derail Maduro’s election campaign. “We’ve captured some of the saboteurs … One was caught red-handed,” Maduro said in a televised meeting with commanders of the armed forces.
The suspects are accused of trying to cut power to Merida, a state in Venezuela, while Maduro was addressing crowds of supporters at a public campaign event.
The former bus driver and trade unionist leads the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) and currently serves as the interim president, following the death of Hugo Chavez on March 5.
With elections less than a week away, the latest opinion polls conducted by Periodico 26, a Cuban newspaper, show Maduro enjoying a healthy 14 to 22 percent lead over his main rival, right-wing opposition candidate, Henrique Capriles.
Carrying forth the revolution
“Maduro has gotten a lot of support in the wake of Chavez’ death, I think he is riding the wave of Chavez. The energized, politicized, active masses have over a decade have transformed Latin American history and could change world history if the gains of the revolution are consolidated,” said John Peterson, national secretary of the Hands Off Venezuela (HOV) campaign to Mint Press News.
HOV has organized hundreds of events across the U.S., including solidarity trips over the last 10 years in support of the Venezuelan people, while calling for an end to U.S. aggression against the Latin American state.
“We are very concerned about a democratically elected leader who governs in an il-liberal way,” said Condoleezza Rice during her confirmation hearing in 2005. “And some of the steps that have been taken, with the media, against the opposition, I think are really very deeply troubling.”
It actually was the Bush administration that acted in an “il-liberal” way, backing an unsuccessful coup against Chavez in 2002.
Chavez died on March 5 after a two-year battle with cancer. More than 2 million mourners poured into the streets of Caracas to celebrate the life of Chavez vowing to carry forth the Bolivarian revolution. During his 14 years in office, Chavez helped championed a mixed economic model that included land reforms, free markets and the nationalization of certain industries. These policies helped cut the poverty rate nearly in half.
According to a comprehensive 2009 study conducted by Center for Economic and Policy Research, poverty in Venezuela dropped from 42.8 percent in 1999 to just 26 percent in 2009. Unemployment dropped from 11.3 percent to 7.8 percent over the same period.
Experts posit that these gains could be threatened by external forces, including the interests of multinational corporations.
“I think that the Venezuelan revolution continues to be a threat to imperialism and multinational corporations. It shouldn’t surprise anyone who is a student of history or U.S. foreign policy,” Peterson said.
U.S. intervention in Latin America
Maduros’ accusation may seem like a conspiratorial claims for political gain, but the threat of assassination remains a possibility, given the history of direct and covert U.S. intervention in Latin American political affairs.
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) backed a military coup against Salvador Allende in September 1973. Allende was a democratically elected Socialist President in Chile who enjoyed broad public support during his three years in office until he was forcefully replaced by the Augusto Pinochet, a military dictator who ruled the country from 1974-1990.
The CIA has also tried for decades to kill Fidel Castro, the former President of Cuba. “They tried to kill Fidel Castro with an exploding cigar, they tried to kill him hundreds of times,” Peterson said. “This is a possibility, it can happen. People have had their choice negated from the outside. People should have the right to choose their own destiny without interference,” Peterson said.
For political analysts, the announcement may be a means to negate the possibility of an assassination. “How realistic any particular plot may be is hard to say. Publicly saying it makes people aware and maybe makes the possibility less likely. It could be something like that,” Peterson said.
“You can be sure that the money is pouring into these opposition groups and that they are going to try to destabilize things. One of the arguments of the reformists in Venezuela is you ‘shouldn’t go too far too fast’ because this will anger the U.S. leading to a direct intervention,” Peterson said.
Such a possibility seems unlikely because of the strong public support for Maduro and the platform of the PSUV.
“The reason they can’t intervene directly is because people are so supportive of this regime. Not everybody is worked up about the election campaign, but after the sort of tumultuous period — Chavez’s illness, Chavez’s death, they are going to have to address the real issues, including rampant crime and inflation. When all is said and done, you can’t have half a revolution,” Peterson said.