Venezuelan opposition puts American in War Room to help oust President

<a href=www.vheadline.com>Venezuela's Electronic news Posted: Friday, May 23, 2003 By: VHeadline.com Reporters

Wall Street Journal (WSJ) staff reporter Marc Lifsher files from Caracas today that "It's the economia, stupid ... Venezuela's embattled private sector is banking on the colorful US political consultant James Carville to help oust leftist President Hugo Chavez ... the hire may herald an effort by the anti-Chavistas to focus more on the issues than on personality."

Lifsher continues: According to several individuals with knowledge of the matter, a group of business executives contracted with Mr. Carville this year to craft a strategy that will unify a fractious and frustrated Chavez opposition and resonate with voters in a possible recall referendum. The executives are hoping that Mr. Carville -- the folksy, 59-year-old Democratic Party consultant from Louisiana known as the Ragin' Cajun -- will push a variation of his "It's the economy, stupid" theme that helped propel Bill Clinton to victory in 1992.

But analysts say Mr. Carville and his clients face a formidable challenge. Mr. Chavez has strengthened his hand since surviving a military coup in April 2002 and defeating a recent two-month national strike led by oil executives, labor leaders and business organizations.

Despite a deepening economic recession, the business elite here and its middle-class allies are finding it hard to persuade core Chavez supporters in urban slums and the countryside that the President isn't delivering on his populist promises. They have another hurdle to jump in blaming all the country's economic problems on Mr. Chavez after their own ill-starred strike accelerated the economy's slide.

"These business owners are arrogant ... they can bring Carville or anyone else, but they don't stop to understand what everyday life is like for the people," says Patricia Marquez, an anthropologist and academic director of the Institute for Higher Administrative Studies, a graduate school of management here in the capital.