Capriles Assassination Attempt?

You may be forgiven for not hearing that there may or may not have been an assassination attempt against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski this weekend. Heck, even if you live in Venezuela you might have overlooked the story given that most of the press coverage here is still focused on President Chávez´s recuperation in Cuba and the government´s recent announcements of products that will have their prices lowered by fiat in the coming months (a common election year tactic). The details of the incident remain murky, but here is the best account I can give.


On Sunday Capriles and his entourage made a tour of Cotiza, a poor section of Caracas that is a bastion of chavismo. Included in his group was Ismael García, who won the opposition primary for mayor of Libertador, the municipality that includes Cotiza. The candidates were speaking with local voters and trying to drum up support in neighborhoods were they likely do not enjoy very much of it. At this point, accounts of the story diverge. According to Capriles and his team, a group of PSUV (Chávez´s party) supporters showed up and tried to start their own rally in the same area. They began to intimidate and threaten Capriles´ supporters. At some point shots rang out, and Ismael García´s son (also named Ismael) was struck in the arm. Fortunately the wound was not serious.

The government has a different understanding of the incident. Justice and Interior Minister Tareck El Aissami, in words reiterated by Vice President Elías Jaua, claims that Capriles´ party brought arms to their politicking and incited the violence. He questioned whether García had even been struck by a bullet, and called the entire affair an illegal move by Capriles. On that last claim he may have a point. The electoral rules here state that campaigning for president may begin on July 1. That may be an arbitrary and unfair rule, and Capriles can try to argue that he was not campaigning but rather participating in community engagemet, but it does seem clear that was his purpose. El Aissami also criticized Capriles for bringing Miranda state police to the event, in an area in which they do not have jurisdiction. He said that everyone is entitled to bodyguards but that bringing outside police was illegal. I would argue that incidents such as this make it justifiable for Capriles to beef up his security detail a little bit, even though the candidate himself has announced that he has no plans to do so.

While I intentionally tried to grab my readers´ attention with the assassination headline, in all honesty it does not look as though that was the intent of the altercation. However, the incident does reveal the tinderbox that is politics in Venezuela right now, and the danger for violence that absolutely does exist. Hopefully this will be the last time that you will have to read about a possible attempt on a politician´s life.