Factor Chavez

George Galloway, the extravagant british MP whenever needing to refer to latin-america is commonly heard repeating the following statement "the only way to win an election in Latin America now (unless you want to cheat as they did in Peru and Mexico) is to say you're a friend of Fidel Castro and an enemy of George Bush." Go check youtube video or writing; the guy has been preaching this junk for the past 7 years though he might replace Chavez with Castro.
Matters in latin america are far from corroborating Galloway's hypothesis. Peru's election were actually thrown away from Ollanta Humala(the loser) on Alan Garcia's favor(one of the worst presidents of latin america in the 80's) because Hugo Chavez kept doing nothing but publicly criticizing Garcia and calling him a thief and bandit. Ollanta Humala did not keep Chavez at bay and never criticized his public meddling; Garcia used the opportunity to depict him as a Chavez puppet. Humala has a good chance of winning next election, but Chavez now knows that he can't be getting involved without damaging his favored candidate.
The Mexican election offers clearer evidence of this, when loser candidate Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador(AMLO) often rejected and denied all assertions of his connections with Hugo Chavez, right at the heat of the election. AMLO lost on a very questionable election, which I share with Galloway, but his rejection of Castro and Chavez where explicit; He almost wins.
In fact using Chavez to make people lose elections is perhaps the newest weapon against the kind of Bolivarian Bolchevism that Chavez exports from Venezuela. Ricardo Martinelli in Panama won 60% of the vote against Balbina Herrera, who had to get out of her way to deny any of her alleged links with Chavez... Even Chavez expressed it himself : "they are trying to use me to scare people away in Panama's and El Salvador's election." Martinelli, which in Chavez standards is a textbook greedy neoliberal oligarch ready to steal away everybody's money won the panamanian election via a third party alternative.
All of this brings me to Honduras and tomorrow's murky referendum called upon by Manuel Zelaya's government but deemed illegal by the country's supreme court and national assembly(at both branches members of his own liberal party declared the election illegal). The ruling came because the election is not being run by the electoral college rather by the executive branch. The details are not entirely clear but things are getting tough for a man who needs to step down by law but seems unable to let go. The Kirchner family who runs the Argentine government is due for midterm elections tomorrow and it will be a good indicator of public support for the controversial governing family. Chavez has been often used by the opposition to generate repudiation to the Kirchner.. lets see if it works.
I am falling asleep, need to study for ARE exams. They seem to be such a racket, but sometimes they can be fun.