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Venezuela: Open Letter to AP's Elizabeth Nuņez re Rosales' rallyBy Aleksander BoydCaracas 08.10.06 | To be frank I was bit upset due to the article sent out from Venezuela's Associated Press (AP) bureau regarding the number of people that attended yesterday's rally in Caracas in support of opposition candidate Manuel Rosales. This morning I called and spoke to Elizabeth Nuņez, who penned the article in question. The first thing I asked Ms. Nuņez was whether she had been to the march to which she said she had. I then asked why she had written "...but reporters on the scene estimated the turnout was above 10,000" (sic). Ms. Nuņez clarified the point by explaining that she is not in the business of guesstimating crowd numbers. Furthermore she did say that she laughed at the Metropolitan Police estimate of about 9.000 people. By chance someone draw my attention to AP's photographer before I made my way to my watch point, from where I took pictures of her. I completely agreed with Ms. Nuņez's opinion with respect to some numbers thrown out by opposition folks, however I did stress upon the fact that readers the world over can make their own minds should photographic evidence be presented to them.
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Oddly enough even chavista rag Ultimas Noticias carries a front page article today entitled "Un gentio en la Avalancha de Rosales" (Huge crowd in Rosales's rally) which is complemented by a picture attributed to AP. Hell even BBC's Greg Morsbach did the job properly. I am not going to venture into the rather imprecise art of estimating crowd figures, rather I will leave it to readers, as Ms. Nuņez should have done.
The woman in the red circle is AP's photographer. From there she's facing the crowd.
Facing an upper platform from where Rosales addressed the rally.
Chavista helicopter filming the event. Every time it passed round Rosales asked people to wave at it saying "let them film, let them see