Weekly Report - 23 August 2012 (WR-12-33)

The government of President Hugo Chávez ordered all of Venezuela’s media this week to carry the message that middle class families will be able to ring a number to request a subsidised home. Ramping up public spending ahead of elections is a time-honoured strategy; however, if Mexico’s defeated presidential candidate Andrés Manuel Lόpez Obrador were competing in Venezuela’s elections he would be filing this example of targeted spending seven weeks before elections under the heading ‘vote-buying’ in readiness for an appeal to the national electoral council.

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