Venezuela presidential election: lack of issues becomes the issue
As Venezuela's presidential candidates kick off their campaigns in the lead-up to the April 14 election, some fear the mudslinging is distracting from needed post-Ch谩vez policy debates.
As Venezuela's presidential candidates kick off their campaigns in the lead-up to the April 14 election, some fear the mudslinging is distracting from needed post-Ch谩vez policy debates.
鈥�听David Smilde is the moderator of WOLA's blog:听Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights.听The views expressed are the author's own.
As mentioned before on this blog, the campaign for the April 14 presidential election is shaping up to be largely issue free as Nicol谩s Maduro, with a comfortable lead, focuses on his connection to the figure of Hugo Ch谩vez, and Henrique Capriles focuses on trying to make clear that 鈥淢aduro is not Ch谩vez.鈥�
[Read about some of the issues the next Venezuelan president will have to face here.]
On March 23 the Observatorio Electoral Venezolano, one of the domestic NGOs that has been accredited to observe the election, criticized the lack of content in the campaign听in the following terms:
On Sunday March 31, UCV political scientist and pro-government activist Nicmer Evans posted a piece on his blog calling on Maduro to discuss substantive ideas.
Response from the government was swift, with Foreign Minister Elias Jaua responding to Evans with a series of Tweets:
The next day Evans announced on Twitter that managers of the state radio station Radio Nacional de Venezuela had decided not to run his weekly program this Monday, but that he hoped the program would return to the air next week. Later that day he posted a rejoinder stating, among other things, 鈥渨hat is important is to reanimate the political discussion in our country which, in my view, has been banalized by a pragmatic electoral vision."
Today, the first day of the campaign, pollster and political analysis Luis Vicente Leon tweeted a series of messages suggesting that classist, racist, homophobic, and other insults based on social categories were not politically effective. 听鈥漋oters care little about insults. They are interested in a candidate鈥檚 capacity (or incapacity) to resolve their daily problems.鈥�
鈥� 听David Smilde is the moderator of WOLA's blog:听Venezuelan Politics and Human Rights.听