Venezuela election rivals clash over crime

By Daniel Wallis

CARACAS (Reuters) - Moments after he registered to run in Venezuela's April 14 election, acting President Nicolas Maduro vowed to go on foot, unarmed, into the toughest slums of Caracas and ask the gangs there to lay down their guns.

Maduro and his opponent, Henrique Capriles, have clashed over a top campaign issue: the daily murders, armed robberies and kidnappings that make the South American country one of the most dangerous in the world.

"We'll go like this, with our chests bare!" Maduro cried at the campaign event, driving the crowd wild as he pulled open his Venezuelan-flag tracksuit top to reveal a red T-shirt emblazoned with the eyes of his late boss, Hugo Chavez.

"We'll go without fear, to tell these youths to stop the killing, to give up the guns, to come to Christ the Redeemer!"

Fears about personal safety routinely top polls of voters' concerns in the country with the world's biggest oil reserves - despite the many programs started by Chavez during his 14-year rule aimed at bringing down the homicide figures.

In a report last week, the U.N. Development Program said that only Honduras, El Salvador, Ivory Coast and Jamaica had worse rates than Venezuela's 45.1 murders per 100,000 people. The rate in the United States was 4.2.

The Venezuelan government concedes the country suffers more violent crime than most of the region. But it accuses opposition politicians of exaggerating the problem and shamelessly stoking fears to tarnish Chavez's socialist "revolution."

On Sunday, Maduro accused the U.S. Department of Defense and Central Intelligence Agency of plotting to assassinate Capriles and blame it on the government to cause chaos and trigger a coup ahead of the vote. Washington categorically denied it.

The opposition candidate, a 40-year-old centrist state governor who accuses Maduro of exploiting the emotion over Chavez's March 5 death in an effort to win the election, kicked off a provincial tour over the weekend.

Capriles calls Maduro a poor imitation of Chavez and mocked his performance outside the electoral authority offices.

"Do you think Nicolas is going to solve the violence problem? It's not opening your jacket and saying 'I'm Superman and I'm going to go I don't know where,'" Capriles said.

"I'd like to leave my house at 11, 12 o'clock in the night, for my children to be able to go out and me not to be terrified. Can we do that today? Can we live like that? No."

WEAK JUSTICE SYSTEM

At the root of the country's crime problem, experts say, is a proliferation of firearms and drugs, and a weak justice system that means the majority of offenses go unpunished.

Among a spate of attacks on prominent victims, a U.S. Major League baseball player and diplomats from Mexico, Chile, Belarus and Costa Rica have been abducted in recent months.

So-called express kidnappings, where targets are dragged off city streets or from their cars and taken to cash machines, or held for a few hours until a ransom is paid, are common.

The government says there were 16,000 homicides nationwide last year, but non-governmental organizations put the figure much higher. The Venezuelan Violence Observatory said its conservative estimate for 2012 was more than 21,000 murders.

Without detailed statistics from the authorities, it is not possible to crosscheck the numbers.

Stung by allegations that the situation is out of control, Chavez's administration revamped the main investigative police unit last year, created several new public safety bodies, and said it cut the homicide rate in Caracas by 10 percent.

Most afflicted by the gangs of criminals are poor residents living in the myriad shantytowns where the late president found his most fervent followers.

Voters seldom held Chavez personally responsible for the high crime rate. Some viewed him almost as a member of the family, others in near-religious terms. Maduro is trying to forge the same emotional bond, but lacks Chavez's charisma.

On Sunday, he inaugurated a new sports facility in the capital's gritty Petare barrio, briefly taking to the court to play basketball with a group of youths. There were wild cheers when he made a basket on his third attempt.

The acting president, who appeared to have visited the neighborhood with the normal level of security and bodyguards that he normally would, blames violent crime on a decadent legacy left behind by capitalist governments in the OPEC nation.

"They've given us these values from birth through narco-TV shows, fashion linked subliminally to drug consumption, fashion linked to pistols, and the cults of guns and of criminal gangs," he said after he registered his candidacy for the presidency.

He accuses the opposition of cynically allowing bandits to roam unchecked - for example, in Miranda state, which includes poor parts of Caracas and where Capriles is governor.

"You know why?" Maduro said to the crowd. "Because they don't care about people's lives. They prefer barrios that are full of drugs and criminality so they can continue stigmatizing the people like they have done for the last 500 years."

(Editing by Bill Trott)

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Possible 2016 rivals offer contrasting visions for Republicans

By Samuel P. Jacobs

OXON HILL, Maryland (Reuters) - The Republican Party heard contrasting messages on Thursday about how to recover from last year's election defeats as two possible contenders for the next presidential campaign in 2016 brandished their conservative credentials.

Addressing a high-profile conference of party activists, Florida Senator Marco Rubio laid out a traditional social conservative agenda and criticized same-sex marriage.

Senator Rand Paul urged Republicans to embrace libertarianism and warned that the "moss-covered" party was turning off young voters who want to decriminalize marijuana.

Son of three-time White House candidate Ron Paul, the Kentucky senator is seen by old-guard Republicans like Senator John McCain as an unstable nonconformist on domestic issues and too isolationist on foreign policy.

Fiscal conservative Rubio is closer to the Republican establishment, which is eager to flaunt his Hispanic credentials to help win back Latino voters who overwhelmingly picked President Barack Obama over Republican Mitt Romney in November's election.

Rubio threw red meat to the Conservative Political Action Conference held just south of Washington, an annual gathering where the party often sizes up early presidential hopefuls.

"Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in the traditional way does not make me a bigot. Just because we believe that life - all life, all human life - is worthy of protection at every stage of its development does not make you a chauvinist," the 41-year-old Cuban-American said.

Perhaps concerned about adverse reaction from conservatives, Rubio did not highlight the issue with which he is most associated in Washington: immigration reform.

The Florida lawmaker is one of eight senators from both parties who are working on legislation that could eventually give the 11 million illegal immigrants in the country a path to citizenship, something opposed by many on the right wing of the Republican Party.

In his speech, Rubio said the families were under threat from same-sex marriage and jokingly described liberals are "freeloaders."

"Do not underestimate, I know this movement does not, the impact that the breakdown of the American family is having on our people and our long-term future," Rubio said.

'STALE AND MOSS-COVERED' PARTY

Speaking directly after his Senate colleague, Paul took a swipe at older Republicans.

"The GOP of old has grown stale and moss-covered. I don't think we need to name any names, do we? Our party is encumbered by an inconsistent approach to freedom," Paul said.

That may have been a jab at McCain, who called Paul, 50, a "wacko bird" for talking almost 13 hours nonstop in the Senate last week. McCain, 76, lost to Obama in the 2008 presidential election.

Paul was using a procedure known as a filibuster to disrupt the confirmation process for Obama's new CIA director, John Brennan, and raise questions about the administration's ground rules for using drones in the United States.

In the kind of comment that won large youth support for his father during last year's presidential campaign, Paul told Republicans on Thursday not to lose the young.

"Ask the Facebook generation whether we should put a kid in jail for a non-violent crime of drug use and you'll hear a resounding, 'No,'" he said. "Ask the Facebook generation if they want to bail out too-big-to-fail banks with their tax dollars and you'll hear a 'Hell, no.'"

Judging by the popularity of bright red T-shirts and stickers bearing his name, Paul won the affection of young activists who turn the three-day event into a conservative spring break.

They have taken "Stand with Rand" as their mantra, following his filibuster last week. Many chose to stand throughout Paul's 19-minute speech on Thursday.

"I'm a longtime supporter of Ron Paul, and Rand Paul is a continuation of a movement that Ron Paul started," said Aaron Rainwater, 23, of Arlington, Virginia.

The senior Paul's presidential runs failed to win over mainstream Republicans, something the younger Paul's supporters believe the freshman senator is capable of doing.

"He's his father's son in the best sense possible, but not his father's son in the best political sense," Rainwater said.

LOOKING TOWARD 2016

It is more than 1,300 days until voters cast their ballots for the next president, but the thousands who traveled to the CPAC conference were already casting their mind toward 2016.

"We are defined by how quickly we pull ourselves off the mat," former Florida Representative Allen West told the audience.

In its 40th year, the conference, like the party it is trying to re-energize, is currently an ideological muddle.

In non-election years, attendees have shown a bent for backing the likes of Ron Paul and evangelical leader Gary Bauer in its annual straw poll. The result of this year's poll will be announced on Saturday.

Outside Washington, a handful of governors have also captured the affection of party activists.

Among them are Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Scott Walker of Wisconsin, who are both attending CPAC this week and have raised their profiles by distinguishing between carrying out conservative reforms in their states and the gridlock in Washington.

Some senior Republicans are noticeable by their absence from this year's conference, organized by the American Conservative Union.

New Jersey's Chris Christie, a Republican governor in a Democratic-dominated state, was not invited despite having one of the highest approval ratings in the country.

Christie upset some Republicans by praising Obama's handling of the disastrous effects of Superstorm Sandy, which slammed New York and New Jersey just days before the election.

Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell will also not attend this year. He ruffled Republicans' feathers by signing a transportation bill that included a tax hike.

Conservatives looking to put the Romney campaign behind them have one obstacle this week: Romney himself, who is scheduled to address the CPAC audience on Saturday.

(Reporting by Samuel P. Jacobs; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by Peter Cooney)

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