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PHIL GUNSON/
Former president Carlos Andrés Pérez, known as "CAP", is dead at 88.
Andres Perez survived corruption scandals at the end of his own first presidency (1974-79) and remained politically active after the impeachment that cut short his second term of office (1989-93).
However, "...the rise to power of his nemesis, Chávez, brought the abolition not only of the upper chamber but of the entire political system founded in 1958. Pérez was reduced to sniping from the political wilderness. From his self-imposed exile in New York, Miami and Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, he sent regular signals that he was conspiring against what he called the Chávez "dictatorship", while simultaneously denying any aspiration to return to party politics. He would set foot in Venezuela, he said, "when the time was right", regardless of any legal or physical risk he might face. That time, however, never came."
