THOUSANDS FLEEING HUGO CHÁVEZ'S VENEZUELA...HA HA HA HA HA HA.....

Thousands Fleeing Hugo Chavez's Venezuela

NewsMax.com
Wednesday, Jan. 31, 2007
Thousands Fleeing Hugo Chavez's Venezuela Each day after dawn, hundreds
of Venezuelans gather outside the Spanish Consulate in Caracas, hoping
to get papers allowing them to flee the South American country for
Spain.
Others form long lines at other consulates, equally fearful of the
future of Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez. Two months after Chavez
was re-elected to another six-year term, the National Assembly is
entrusting him with wide-ranging powers that will allow him to dictate
new laws for 18 months.
Among its major moves, the government has announced that it will
nationalize telecommunications and electric utilities and other
strategic industries, decline to renew the broadcast license of RCTV
television - which officials allege supported a coup against Chavez in
2002 - and amend the constitution to remove presidential term limits,
allowing Chavez to repeatedly seek re-election.
"What we're seeing happen here is not good," Jose Manuel Rodriguez, 42,
an accountant seeking travel documents at the Spanish Consulate, told
the Washington Post.
"What we see here is the coming of totalitarianism, fewer guarantees,
fewer civil rights. I want to have everything ready to leave."
Sen. Patrick J. Leahy, D-Vt., chairman of the Senate Appropriations
foreign operations subcommittee, said in a statement this week: "We
should all be concerned about the direction President Chavez is taking
his country.
"Any leader who tries to tighten his grip on power by destroying the
institutions of democracy, curtailing press freedom and using his office
to intimidate pro-democracy opponents is setting in motion a dangerous
process with potentially ominous consequences."
Some Venezuelans who are fleeing the country are opting for residence in
the U.S., according to the Miami Herald. "The latest figures show a
surge of Venezuelans moving to the United States either through asylum,
permanent residence or other visas," the Herald reported.
"Those who seek asylum are claiming persecution or that communism is
about to take hold in Venezuela."
Venezuelan government officials insist that "the president's moves are
the will of the people and that his latest electoral victory is a
mandate for Chavez to deepen what he calls his Bolivarian
revolution,"? the Post reports.
But a recent survey in Venezuela by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a
Washington, D.C. polling firm, found that a strong majority of
Venezuelans oppose the plan to remove presidential term limits and the
decision not to renew RCTV's license.
Mark Feierstein, a political adviser with the polling firm, said the
survey "suggests Chavistas are uncomfortable with some of this and, more
importantly, it shows that Chavez is misinterpreting his mandate."
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/1/31/104327.shtml?s=ic

.