MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Vargas Llosa fears manipulation of Venezuela legislative elections

The renowned novelist and frustrated politician

The renowned Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa fears manipulation of the coming legislative elections in Venezuela, masterminded by President Hugo Chavez, whom together with other Latinamerican leaders he defines as “caudillos”.

“It seems hard that free elections can take place in Venezuela nowadays. It’s a pity because I’m convinced that the majority of Venezuelans are against Chavez particularly the middle class, academia, trade unions, but I fear manipulation of the September 26 elections”, said Vargas Llosa in a Sunday interview with the conservative German daily “Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung”.

The Peruvian novelist, a well known political enemy of the Venezuelan president adds that Chavez “controls the whole of the state structure and the media”, and has no qualms about suffocating dissent.

“If Chavez ever falls, it won’t be through elections but with the people in the streets protesting the internal rotting of a completely corrupt regime” he underlines.

“The Chavez regime looks every day more like that of Fidel in Cuba”, added the Peruvian novelist who recalled last year’s frustrated attempt to participate in a debate with Chavez, during a visit to Venezuela, but which according to Vargas Llosa, “the president skipped the appointment at last minute”.

Vargas Llosa said that if he had had the opportunity he would had told Chavez that he’s become “a caricature of a South American revolutionary and a demagogue”, preacher of “Marxist clichés”.

The Peruvian novelist also criticizes other populist Latin American leaders, “leaving aside country differences” Chavez as well as Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua are “Latinamerican caudillos of the worst kind”.

Further on he attributes to what he defines as “regrettable inconsequence” the fact that moderate left wing leaders in the region such as Brazil’s Lula da Silva support the “caudillos while capitalism flourishes in Brazil”.

Finally Vargas Llosa warns that “the drugs industry is the great plague that threatens the still fragile democratic structures of the region”, and several countries are particularly exposed.