JBeukema
Rookie
- Banned
- #1
Venezuela's Exclusion of anti-Chavez Candidates Faces a Challenge - TIMELeopoldo López was once touted as a future leader of Venezuela, a young and appealing opposition figure who could have challenged President Hugo Chávez in next year's presidential election. After serving as mayor of Chacao, a major commercial district of the capital, from 2000 to 2008 he won his 2004 re-election with 81% of the vote the Harvard-educated López was poised in 2008 to run for mayor of all Caracas, with a 65% lead in the polls. But López was stopped in his tracks when he, together with more than 300 other Venezuelan politicians, were declared "inhabilitados" by Chávez's comptroller general, and disqualified from seeking public office until 2014 because they were supposedly guilty of corruption in their past.
Not surprisingly, say Chávez critics, 80% of those disqualified were opposition politicos. And, like López, most have never been formally charged, let alone convicted of any crime.