Caracas, 20 Ago. AVN .- Pedro Alcantara, candidate of the opposition for Lara state, was the censor of the newspaper El Nacional during the Carlos Perez Administration and took part on the raid to the seat of the newspaper in 1993.

According to the book Cronología de una Implosion, from Teresa Maniglia, on Feb. 08 1993, “censors started to visit media outlets. To the newspaper El Nacional went Pedro Alcantara. Newspapers published blank pages, censured.”

The following day, “El Nacional is raided and its editions are kidnapped. The newspaper could not be distributed,” reads the book.

However, it was not the first time Alcantara broke into the seat of the newspaper to decide -according to the interests of the Perez Administration- which information should be printed.

In 1992, after the civilian-military rebellion on February 04 that year, the current candidate to the Venezuelan opposition was sent to El Nacional on Feb. 10 to “eliminate inconvenient information.”

Paradoxically, the current director of El Nacional, Miguel Enrique Otero, who affirms to “defend press freedom,” has used the newspaper to campaign the opposition candidates who want to take the Parliament next month of September. Among these candidates highlights Mr Alcantara.

Alcantara is politically active in Un Nuevo Tiempo, the political party of fugitive Manuel Rosales, who fled to Peru to evade a trial on corruption.

Pornographic campaign

As part of the opposition"s political campaign, openly supported by Otero and focused on blowing the insecurity issue out of proportion, El Nacional released last Friday a morbid picture. This, with a not even recent date, explicitly showed corpses in a morgue.

The purpose of the picture was “a clearly political act.” So was admitted by the director of newspaper Tal Cual, Teodoro Petkoff, who similarly to other newspapers reproduced the picture on his journal.

El Nacional policies and guidelines stipulate that it will avoid releasing “unpleasant pictures.” However, its own director warned a day earlier through Twitter that he would give an example of “journalistic pornography.”