Rarely has the phrase “three strikes, you’re out” been so controversial on Venezuela’s baseball fields — or in its politics.
Opposition leaders have seized on three issues weighing on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — uncontrolled crime, water shortages and electricity cuts — to adopt a new sporting slogan for protests: “Chavez, you’ve struck out.”
The opposition has struggled in the past to come up with punchy campaigns to erode the socialist Chavez’s popularity. But this phrase has been widely picked up this month, nowhere more than in baseball stadiums.
“I think ‘You’ve struck out’ is going to be the phrase of the year,” said Oscar Camacho, 25, an engineer, preparing to watch the sixth game of a pulsating championship series in a buzzing Caracas bar. “We’re suffering with power rationing, we’ve got no water and crime is out of control, this is our day-to-day reality.”
Inside stadiums, the phrase has popped up on banners and in chants, irking the baseball-loving Chavez and becoming a rare successful rallying cry for the fragmented opposition.
The phrase has sparked pushing and shoving inside stadiums among rival groups. Some TV directors have tried to keep the cameras off such incidents to avoid fanning tensions and charges of political bias.
Though opposition leaders remain divided and have not yet put together a popular alternative program, they sense a window of opportunity this year as Chavez heads toward September legislative elections with a mound of problems.
First on Venezuelans’ worry list is one of the world’s highest murder rates. But cuts in water and electricity services that began at the end of last year seem to be hurting Chavez most, analysts said.
The government blames a drought, but opposition leaders point to 11 years of mismanagement and inefficiency.
Most analysts believe Chavez’s power-base among the masses — his approval levels are down, but still around 50 percent — and an electoral system skewed in favor of his party mean he will still keep a majority in the National Assembly.
Venezuela’s professional baseball league was so worried about politics spilling into its arenas that it issued a rare statement urging rival fans, who traditionally soak each other with beer, not to “upset public order” with political slogans.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS