Caracas, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez sought another six-year term Sunday in an election that weighed the popularity of his oil-funded handouts to the poor against fears of increasingly authoritarian rule by one of the Bush administration’s most outspoken overseas opponents.
Chavez anticipated a crushing victory over tough-talking political veteran Manuel Rosales who has galvanized the opposition by promising to unseat a man he accuses of edging the country toward totalitarianism.
Voters waited for hours in snaking lines, and elections officials predicted a record turnout. An independent AP-Ipsos poll last month and other pre-election surveys gave Chavez a double-digit advantage.
Since he first won office in 1998, Chavez has increasingly dominated all branches of government and his allies now control congress, state offices and the judiciary. He has called President Bush the devil, allied himself with Iran and influenced elections across the region.
Chavez also has used Venezuela’s oil wealth to his political advantage. He has channeled oil profits toward multibillion-dollar programs for the poor including subsidized food, free university education and cash benefits for single mothers. He has also helped allies from Cuba to Bolivia with oil and petrodollars.
On Sunday, the incumbent waved and blew kisses to cheering supporters as he arrived in a red Volkswagen Beetle to vote in a Caracas slum.
“I’m absolutely sure that the process is and will be totally transparent,” Chavez said. “Let’s vote, leave calmly and wait for the results.” Voting in his hometown of Maracaibo, Rosales grasped the hands of dozens of cheering supporters, saying, “Today the future of Venezuela is at stake.” The crowd chanted “Presidente!” Rosales complained of scattered voting problems in traditionally pro-opposition areas that he said included delays and apparent malfunctions of electronic voting machines that had printed blank vote receipts. But later, leading Rosales campaign official Gerardo Blyde thanked electoral officials for helping to solve the problems.
Chavez supporters jarred voters awake hours before dawn in Caracas with recordings of reveille blaring from truck-mounted loudspeakers.
“We’re here to support our president, who has helped us so much,” said Jose Domingo Izaguirre, a factory worker who waited hours to vote. His family recently moved into new government housing.
Rosales supporters accused Chavez of deepening class divisions with searing rhetoric demonizing his opponents.
Alicia Primera, a 54-year-old housewife, was among voters so passionate about the choice that they camped out overnight in voting queues.
“I voted for Chavez previously. I cried for him,” Primera said. “Now I’m crying for him to leave. He’s sown a lot of hate with his verbiage.” The campaign has been hostile, with Chavez calling Rosales a pawn of Washington and Rosales saying he was on the alert for fraud. Rosales’ campaign had endorsed the electronic voting system as trustworthy – as long as no attempts were made to thwart it.
More than 125,000 soldiers and reservists were deployed to safeguard the balloting.
In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Janelle Hironimus stressed “the importance of a free, fair and transparent process.” Conflict and ambition have marked the rise of Chavez, 52, from a boy selling homemade sweets in a dusty backwater to a failed coup commander in 1992 and now a leader who could set the tone of Latin American politics for years to come.
Constitutional reforms he oversaw in 1999 triggered new elections the following year that he easily won. Loyalists helped him survive a 2002 coup, a subsequent general strike and a 2004 recall referendum.
Rosales, a cattle rancher and governor of western Zulia state who stepped down temporarily to run against Chavez, has rebuilt the opposition from its referendum defeat. His campaign focused on issues such as rampant crime and corruption, widely seen as Chavez’s main vulnerabilities.
Chavez says he would convene a commission upon re-election to propose constitutional reforms, likely including an end to presidential term limits. Current law prevents him from running again in 2012.
Some Rosales supporters worry a re-elected Chavez would turn more radical. Chavez insists he is a democrat and will continue to respect private property – though he has boosted state control over the oil industry and has said he might nationalize utilities.
Venezuela is the world’s fifth largest oil exporter and soaring oil prices have made it the continent’s fastest growing economy.
Chavez has pledged at least $1.1 billion in loans and financial aid to Latin American countries in the past two years, and billions more in bond bailouts for friendly governments as well as generously financed oil deals. But the largesse has proved a weakness at home, with polls suggesting many Venezuelans believe the aid impedes efforts to address the country’s own problems.
Chavez, who says Fidel Castro is like a father to him, has built increasingly close ties with Cuba, sending the island oil while thousands of Cuban doctors treat Venezuela’s poor for free.
In Havana, Venezuelans receiving medical care in Cuba rolled in wheelchairs and wobbled on crutches and even arrived in stretchers to cast absentee ballots.
