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THOMSON: Chavez loses while winning

By | Sunday, November 30, 2008

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The results of last Sunday´s elections in Venezuela are clear, or are they? Hugo Chavez and his leftist coalition won the Nov. 23 state and municipal elections, encouraging the Venezuelan autocrat, originally elected in 1999, to again try to become president for life.

Mr. Chavez was so pleased he held a press conference for the international press, blessing the gathering with a two-hour monologue. The president's tactic is to convince one and all he is again popular and therefore entitled to press for an enabling court ruling or constitutional change to run for the presidency with no term limits. He currently is barred constitutionally from running for re-election in 2012.

The results do not justify his real or feigned confidence. An objective review of both the results and the conditions of the elections reveals Mr. Chavez greatly exaggerates his victory.

Opposition candidates won five of 22 state governorships outright. Most important, their victories included Miranda, Carabobo and Zulia, respectively the heart, industrial and petroleum centers, and the nation's three most populous states. Together with victories in the two largest cities, Caracas and Maracaibo, the opposition now controls 70 percent of Venezuela's gross domestic product.

Four of the five municipalities comprising metro Caracas elected opposition mayors, including Sucre, teeming with 720,000 mostly impoverished inhabitants, supposedly the Chavistas' core support. Eduardo Ramirez, a key backer of winning Sucre mayoral candidate, 37-year-old Carlos Ortiz, put Mr. Chavez's plight clearly: "We are exploding the myth that only Chavez can be the champion of the poor."

Overall, the opposition received 5 million votes, 47.5 percent of the total, a remarkable achievement despite massive pro-Chavez fraud and overpowering spending. Ambassador Norman Pino, a retired career diplomat and experienced political observer, considers the results a clear indicator of Mr. Chavez's plummeting popularity. "He toured the country endlessly, turning the elections into a personal plebiscite. Nevertheless, the pro-democracy vote increased by more than 50 percent. With all his monetary and other advantages, the fact pro-Chavez candidates received only slightly more than 50 percent support is devastating."

Former Chavez ally, ex-communist guerrilla and muckraking newspaper editor Teodoro Petkoff estimates Mr. Chavez's current core support at 20 percent, and declining. As he told me in a recent interview, "Hugo Chavez's weakest point is the man himself. ... The problem of Chavez is Chavez."

Massive unconstitutional government campaign expenditures, two months of nonstop canvassing by Mr. Chavez and major fraud in virtually all sectors (especially poor urban and remote rural areas) marked the weeks preceding the Nov. 23 elections.

Fair government and opposition forces were able to monitor the urban areas won by the opposition, but not the rural areas, where Mr. Chavez and his allies gained their victories. On election day, the opposition needed 120,000 poll watchers, but were able to field some 80,000, most of them focused on urban polling locations.