[Translation by RCG. We picked this article up and thought it was worth putting out in English for those following the blog and to keep informed of some of the tactics being used by the Venezuelan opposition]
[Junge Welt 05.10.12] In the night from Thursday to Friday the election campaigns in Venezuela have officially ended. Since then all sorts of campaign activities like rallies, meetings and stalls are prohibited. However the opponents of the government do carry on with their campaign – via spam.
Just last Wednesday the corespondents of Junge Welt have a new mobile number in order to be available in the capital of Venezuela. Then on Friday morning we received an SMS which was sent from a Venezuelan number. The number was not known to us – no wonder, because the sender was inviting us to vote for the right-wing party “Un Nuevo Tiempo” (A New Age): “Vote safe, vote for Henrique Capriles on the list of Un Nuevo Tiempo – down on the right of the ballot paper”.
The corespondents of Junge Welt, who are obviously not eligible to vote in Venezuela, did not register their number anywhere. Nevertheless the message got through to us. And we are not the only ones. Venezuelan students, for example those that study at a university in Germany, had already been bothered this way weeks ago.
In an interview with Junge Welt, Carlos Aquino the secretary of organisation of the CP of Venezuela says forces in the Venezuelan mobile networks are providing the opposition with their infrastructure for propaganda purposes.
With other methods the opposition tries to foment anger against the Government. In the middle of the night, preferably towards 2am, the people who are entitled to vote are being called from Mexican and other foreign numbers.
They hear a voice, which sounds like the voice of President Chavez and which invokes them to vote for the incumbent President. The calculation behind these phone calls is obviously that those people who are harassed like this would be voting for the opposition just out of outrage. In any case these phone calls do not originate from the Venezuelan Government says “Comando Carabobo”, the election campaign staff for Hugo Chavez.
German original published by Junge Welt on 5 October 2012, http://www.jungewelt.de/blogs/venezuela-waehlt/index.php?id=1015
