MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Venezuelan opposition dares and “avalanches” Caracas

An estimated 200.000 people turned out to the streets of Caracas on Saturday in support of Manuel Rosales, Venezuela's main opposition leader for the coming December presidential elections and who intends to defeat President Hugo Chavez re-election bid.

Under slogans the "Great Caracas avalanche" and "Dare" thousands of Venezuelans convened to the centre of the capital in a massive demonstration of support for Rosales who claimed Venezuela was currently ruled by "Cuban authoritarianism", which if elected he promised to put an end.

Jose Vicente Carrasquero, head of Rosales campaign said the organization was "most pleased" with the turnout and mainly because "the people of Caracas have openly supported the call for unity".

However Mr. Rosales addressing the crowd did not emphasize on the massive support but rather called on the "rivers and rivers of Venezuelans who flooded the streets of Caracas in a true display of avalanche" to prepare to rule "without retaliation".

"If anybody here today feels he has (political) bills to collect, forget it", underlined Rosales in direct reference to possible retaliations against "pro-Chavez" supporters in the event of an opposition victory.

Rosales said he was confident the coming December 3 election would "floor" Chavez intentions of re-election and highlighted that Venezuela's great challenge is to "shake off" Cuban tutelage.

"This guy", he said in his speech (never mentioning Chavez by name) "is the puppet of the communist and totalitarian system which has the Cuban people imprisoned", and members of that regime are currently ruling Venezuela, "and this is going to end".

The opposition candidate said he referred to the president as "that guy", because when he first was elected in 1999 he said he didn't deserve to have a name until the problem of the abandoned street children had been solved.

"Alter eight years of this masked communism the number of street children, beggars and homeless has trebled", in spite of the fact that during this period Venezuela received 400 billion US dollars from oil exports.

Rosales reiterated his promise that if elected a fifth of oil windfall profits would be distributed among lower middle class and popular sectors at an average 280 to 465 US dollars per family. He also challenged official oil production figures which allege Venezuela is pumping 3.4 million bpd, "at the most it's 1.1 million bpd and a big portion is been handed out to other countries".

"In my administration, not one dollar or barrel" would be given away. He then asked how you call those who hand out for free "our resources, traitors, yes traitors with capital letters, let the people compare and judge".

Rosales warned that if Chavez is re-elected, the government is going to tell us "how we must dress, they will ration our food and further curtail freedoms".

This he insisted, will be most evident in the education system beginning next year when ideology will be introduced in schools and colleges, "ideology and politics inspired in Marxism and communism, guerrilla warfare, death, violence, but we are going to stop all that".

Rosales who is governor of the oil producing state of Zulia, the richest and most populated of Venezuela, together with veteran leftwing leader Teodoro Petkoff and centrist Julio Borges managed to unite the opposition following the disastrous abstention policy of last December's parliamentary elections which delivered Chavez a one color legislative branch.

Although the release of public opinion surveys are strictly monitored by the Chavez regime, one of the few to become public showed that support for Chavez between June and September dropped from 55 to 48% and Rosales' soared from 7 to 30%.