Jackson Diehl's column in today's Post profiles Leopoldo López, a would-be candidate for mayor of Caracas and an opponent of Hugo Chávez. López, more popular locally and nationally than Chávez, has been barred from November's election on a spurious technicality, just as most of the government's more formidable opponents have been blocked from state and local contests across the nation.
The immediate future of the Venezuelan opposition lies in finding moderate young reformers like López, who can batter Chávez for his mis-management and international profligacy, offer a more sustainable anti-poverty plan, and avoid the taint of the corrupt-to-the-core elites who dominated before Chávez arrived in Caracas. And as Diehl points out, it's precisely because people like López can make electoral headway that he's not allowing them to run. Chávez has backed off some of his more extreme positions lately, but letting his opponents run in November is a much more dangerous proposition than denouncing the FARC.
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