Venezuela’s 2012 State Election: Lessons for Chavismo and the Opposition

by Ewan Robertson, Venezuelanalysis · 2012-12-19 · first published in Venezuelanalysis · 142 words

This was not a Socialist Resistance publication. marxsite was Phil Hearse’s own long-form site, run alongside the paper he helped edit. It is kept here with his agreement, recovered from the Internet Archive after the domain lapsed and was taken over by someone else; nothing here links to the address it now points at.

As credited on the page: “By Ewan Robertson, Venezuelanalysis”

Only a fragment of this survives. It may have been a short link-and-comment post, which marxsite ran many of, or the opening of a longer piece cut off by the capture — from what remains there is no way to tell which. The original is still readable at Venezuelanalysis: read it in full. The full piece runs to about 5,167 words against the 142 that survive here.

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By Ewan Robertson, Venezuelanalysis

The United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) won an impressive victory in the 16 December 2012 regional election, winning 20 of 23 states. The PSUV didn’t lose a single state it already held, while it won four from the opposition. Those were Nueva Esparta, Carabobo, and the important border states with Colombia, Tachira and Zulia, the latter being considered an opposition stronghold. The PSUV also recovered Monagas state from Jose “the Cat” Briceño, who was PSUV governor since 2004, and switched sides to the opposition earlier this year.

As such, the only “real” opposition gubernatorial candidate to win re-election was opposition leader Henrique Capriles in Miranda, a victory seen as crucial for his hopes of being the opposition’s candidate in the case of fresh presidential elections. He fended off a strong challenge from former Venezuelan vice-president Elias Jaua.

The capture this was recovered from