Crack Down Hugo

CARACAS (Reuters) - Hours after President Hugo Chavez shut down Venezuela's main opposition broadcaster, his government demanded an investigation of news network Globovision on Monday for allegedly inciting an assassination attempt on the leftist leader.

Seizing on the momentum of RCTV's closure, Communications Minister Willian Lara presented a case to the state prosecutor's office saying experts hired by the ministry had found that opposition broadcaster Globovision was inciting assassination attempts on Chavez.

As evidence, he cited Globovision showing footage of an assassination attempt against Pope John Paul II in 1981 accompanied by the song "This Does Not Stop Here," sung by Ruben Blades, now Panama's minister of tourism.

"The conclusion of the specialists ... is that (in this segment) they are inciting the assassination of the president of Venezuela," Lara told reporters at the prosecutor's office.

----Yep, the people of Venezuela love their leader, well …'ceptin the squeezed out middle class and those 18,000 oil workers Hugo fired … I couldn't find Ruben's song but here's one for El Presidente, non-inciting, I think.

Abba-Fernando