Jorge Arreaza: The government is protecting the opposition from itself

The Vice-president Jorge Arreaza yesterday addressed a group of foreign diplomats accredited in Venezuela and, according to the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias, “alerted over the media manipulation of the national political scenario that is promoted by the right-wing ahead of the December 6 elections, as part of their plan to sabotage them.”

Arreaza said: “The media attacks against Venezuela every time there are elections are terrible. There is a pattern here, a planned and well-rehearsed script.

Arreaza also repeated the government version according to which the leader of opposition Party Luis Manuel Díaz was killed as part of a settling of scores between organized gangs fighting for the control of Guárico State’s criminal activities. Arreaza said that Díaz had belonged to the gang of “Los Plateados.”

The Vice-president added that the Venezuelan government has information that the “ultra-right” is planning to commit “political crimes with the aim of generating confusion and of blaming the government for such crimes.” 

According to him these rightists groups are paying between 30,000 and 60,000 dollars to sicarios for the assassination of Lilian Tintori, wife of jailed opposition leader Leopoldo López, as well as other opposition figures. President Nicolas Maduro had previously also declared that “the right” is paying people “up to $50,000 to generate violence in Venezuela.”

Fortunately, declared Arreaza, “the government is offering protection to Tintori and to other opposition leaders that are showing up in intelligence lists as targets.”

The Venezuelan government backed news channel Telesur is also running a series of pieces claiming that the opposition is falsely accusing PSUV militants of electoral violence and that the recent attacks on opposition electoral meetings is all part of a plot that includes paid sicarios dressed as PSUV supporters. In this article, “The false attacks against the MUD in Venezuela,” Telesur explains that it suspects that the immediate complaints by the MUD of alleged attacks were planned in cahoots with the Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, the European Parliament, and the United States Embassy in Caracas.

In a not very subtle attempt to criminalize the opposition parties umbrella organization Mesa de la Unidad (MUD), Telesur is running via twitter (@teleSURtv), under the hashtag #MUDmafiososYasesinos, this information about the “Criminal network of the Venezuelan ultra-right” already published in August.