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Weekly Report - 15 December 2011 (WR-11-50)

VENEZUELA: Chávez revs up the Revolution

President Hugo Chávez is loosening the purse strings ahead of presidential elections in less than 10 months, rolling out two big social ‘missions’ at a cost of nearly US$8bn a year to reduce poverty. More 'missions' will follow shortly. The opposition Mesa de Unidad Democrática (MUD) claims that Chávez is spending what is simply not in the purse in the first place, saddling the country with unprecedented debt to secure his re-election. Chávez publicly claimed this week that the six opposition pre-candidates lacked the “moral and intellectual prerequisites” to contest the presidency, but the big increases in spending, coupled with his major shake-up of the leadership of the ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), suggest that privately he realises this is likely to be the closest election he has faced.

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