FINANCIAL TIMES: Chavez revolution at risk

"There are three things you can’t hide: a cough, a pregnancy and money,” says Wilmer Azuaje, an ambitious 31-year-old politician running to be mayor of Barinas, the capital of a sprawling cattle-ranching state of the same name in Venezuela’s far west. The issue of money in Barinas may prove crucial come November’s nationwide state and municipal elections. In running for office, Mr Azuaje is not only going against his political peers – President Hugo Chavez’ United Socialist party (PSUV), from which he was expelled last month after announcing his candidacy – but against the Chavez family, which has been the unofficial ruling clan of Barinas for a decade. The opposition has long accused the Chavez family in the state of malfeasance, and there is a current parliamentary investigation into whether members of the family used public money to accumulate a series of farms. “Is this what they call socialism?” says Mr Azuaje. “President Chavez has to keep his family under control. They are making him look bad before the eyes of the world.”