CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Voters who kept Hugo Chavez in office for 14 years were deciding Sunday whether to elect the devoted lieutenant he chose to carry on the revolution that endeared him to the poor but that many Venezuelans believe is ruining the nation.
Across Caracas, trucks blaring bugle calls awoke Venezuelans long before dawn in the ruling socialists’ traditional election day get-out-the-vote tactic. This time, they also boomed Chavez’s voice singing the national anthem.
Chosen successor Nicolas Maduro adopted the late leader’s tactics, topics and even tone of voice as he ran a campaign that often resembled a religious homage to the man he called “the redeemer of the Americas,” whose death of cancer on March 5 set off a national outpouring of grief.
Chavez’s longtime foreign minister pinned his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of a socialist government’s largesse and the heft of a state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated.
The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn get-out-the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees. It also enjoyed a pervasive state media apparatus as part of a near monopoly on institutional power.
Challenger Henrique Capriles’ aides accused Chavista loyalists in the judiciary of putting them at glaring disadvantage by impoverishing the campaign and opposition broadcast media by targeting them with unwarranted fines and prosecutions.
Capriles’ main campaign weapon was simply to point out “the incompetence of the state,” as he put it to reporters Saturday night.
Maduro, 50, was still favoured, but his early big lead in opinion polls halved over the past two weeks in a country struggling with the legacy of Chavez’s management of the world’s largest oil reserves. Millions of Venezuelans were lifted out of poverty under Chavez, but many also believe that his confederates not only squandered but also plundered much of the $1 trillion in oil revenues during his time in office.
