VOA News/ 11 Jun
2001 00:18 UTC
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is urging his supporters to set up
Cuban-style neighborhood groups dedicated to backing his self-style revolution.
On Sunday in his weekly radio address, President Chavez unveiled plans for new
community groups, called Bolivarian Circles, to defend his leftist rule.
Mr. Chavez is a former army paratrooper elected president in a landslide
victory in 1998. Since taking office, he has made sweeping political changes.
His neighborhood initiative is similar to community groups in Cuba that defend
one-party communist rule there.
President Chavez has dissolved congress and the judiciary, led efforts to
rewrite the country's constitution and won fresh elections mandated in the new
charter.
Mr. Chavez remains very popular with the country's poor and has governed
virtually unopposed during his administration. |