The Candidate/the President Quotes in The House of the Spirits
“We’re not interested in a military coup, General,” the head of Embassy intelligence replied in studied Spanish. “We want Marxism to be a colossal failure and for it to fall alone, so we can erase it from the people’s minds throughout the continent. You understand? We’re going to solve this problem with money. We can still buy a few members of Congress so they won’t confirm him as President. It’s in your Constitution: he didn’t get an absolute majority, and Congress has to make the final choice.”
“Get that idea out of your head, mister!” Trueba exclaimed. “You’re not going to bribe anyone around here! The Congress and the armed forces are above corruption. It would be better if we used the money to buy the mass media. That would give us a way to manipulate public opinion, which is the only thing that really counts.”
At first his long democratic experience impeded his ability to set traps for the new government, but he soon gave up the idea of obstructing it by legal means and came to accept the fact that the only way to unseat it was by using illegal ones. He was the first to declare in public that only a military coup could halt the advance of Marxism because people who had anxiously waited fifty years to be in power would not relinquish it because there was a chicken shortage.
The Candidate/the President Quotes in The House of the Spirits
“We’re not interested in a military coup, General,” the head of Embassy intelligence replied in studied Spanish. “We want Marxism to be a colossal failure and for it to fall alone, so we can erase it from the people’s minds throughout the continent. You understand? We’re going to solve this problem with money. We can still buy a few members of Congress so they won’t confirm him as President. It’s in your Constitution: he didn’t get an absolute majority, and Congress has to make the final choice.”
“Get that idea out of your head, mister!” Trueba exclaimed. “You’re not going to bribe anyone around here! The Congress and the armed forces are above corruption. It would be better if we used the money to buy the mass media. That would give us a way to manipulate public opinion, which is the only thing that really counts.”
At first his long democratic experience impeded his ability to set traps for the new government, but he soon gave up the idea of obstructing it by legal means and came to accept the fact that the only way to unseat it was by using illegal ones. He was the first to declare in public that only a military coup could halt the advance of Marxism because people who had anxiously waited fifty years to be in power would not relinquish it because there was a chicken shortage.
