Chavez pick Maduro wins Venezuela vote

Residents wait in line at a polling station during the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, on Sunday. The newspaper’s headline reads in Spanish, “Vote in Peace.”
Residents wait in line at a polling station during the presidential election in Caracas, Venezuela, on Sunday. The newspaper’s headline reads in Spanish, “Vote in Peace.”

CARACAS, Venezuela - Venezuelan electoral officials said Sunday that voters narrowly elected Hugo Chavez’s hand-picked successor as president in a razor-close special election.

Winner Nicolas Maduro campaigned on a promise to carry on Chavez’s self-styled socialist revolution, and defeated a two-time challenger who claimed the late president’s regime has put Venezuela on the road to ruin.

Officials say Maduro defeated Henrique Capriles by only about 300,000 votes. The margin was 50.7 percent to 49.1 percent.

Tensions rose soon after polls closed as both sides hinted at victory and suggested the other was plotting fraud.

Jorge Rodriguez, the head of the campaign for Maduro, strongly suggested earlier in the night that Maduro had won by smiling and summoning supporters to the presidential palace, where Chavez’s supporters gathered to celebrate the late president’s past victories. And he warned that Maduro’s camp would not allow the will of the people to be subverted.

Capriles and his campaign aides immediately lashed out at Rodriguez’s comments.

Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, a Capriles campaign coordinator, suggested the government was trying to steal the election.

“They know perfectly well what happened and so do we,” he said at a hastily called news conference. “They are misleading their people and are trying to mislead the people of this country.”

Capriles also suggested fraud was in the works in a Twitter message: “We alert the country and the world of the intent to change the will of the people!”

Maduro, the longtime foreign minister to Chavez, pinned his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of government largesse and the powerful state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated.

Maduro’s campaign was mostly an homage to the man he called “the redeemer of the Americas,” who died of cancer March 5. He blamed Venezuela’s myriad woes on vague plots by purported saboteurs that the government never identified.

Capriles’ main campaign weapon was to simply emphasize “the incompetence of the state,” as he put it to reporters Saturday night.

Maduro, 50, was favored to win, but his early big lead in opinion polls was cut in half 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 his government not only squandered but also plundered much of the $1 trillion in oil revenue during his tenure.

Venezuelans are afflicted by chronic power failures, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public-works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages, and rampant crime. Venezuela has one of the world’s highest homicide and kidnapping rates.

Under Chavez, homicides almost quadrupled, jumping to 16,030 in 2012 from 4,550 in 1998, the year before he took office, according to data published by the government and the United Nations.

“We can’t continue to believe in messiahs,” said Jose Romero, a 48-year-old industrial engineer who voted for Capriles in the central city of Valencia. “This country has learned a lot and today we know that one person can’t fix everything.”

In the Chavista stronghold of Petare outside Caracas, the Maduro vote was strong. Maria Velasquez, 48, who works in a government soup kitchen that feeds 200 people, said she was voting for Chavez’s man “because that is what my comandante ordered.”

The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn get-out the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees. It also enjoyed the backing of state media as part of its near-monopoly on institutional power.

Capriles’ camp said Chavista loyalists in the judiciary put them at glaring disadvantage by slapping the campaign and broadcast media with fines and prosecutions that they called unwarranted.

Capriles is a 40-year-old state governor who lost to Chavez in October’s presidential election by a nearly 11-point margin, the best showing ever by a challenger to the longtime president.

At his campaign rallies, Capriles would read out a list of unfinished road, bridge and rail projects. Then he asked people what goods were scarce on store shelves.

Capriles showed Maduro none of the respect he earlier accorded Chavez. Maduro hit back hard, at one point calling Capriles’ backers “heirs of Hitler.” It was an odd accusation considering that Capriles is the grandson of Holocaust survivors from Poland.

The opposition contended Chavez looted the treasury last year to buy his re-election with government handouts. It also complained about the steady flow of cut-rate oil to Cuba, which Capriles said would end if he won.

Venezuela’s $30 billion fiscal deficit is equal to about 10 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.

Maduro, a former union activist and bus driver with close ties to Cuba’s leaders, constantly alleged that Capriles was conspiring with the U.S.to destabilize Venezuela and even suggested Washington had infected Chavez with the cancer that killed him.

He focused his campaign message on his mentor: “I am Chavez. We are all Chavez.” And he promised to expand anti-poverty programs.

Maduro also said fighting crime and attracting “productive” investment would be his two top priorities if elected. He added that Venezuela would be willing to normalize relations with the U.S. if it “receives respect.”

Voting lines seemed considerably lighter than in the October election that Chavez won, when more than 80 percent of the electorate turned out, although government officials said it was because of the improved efficiency of the system.

After polls closed there were moments of tension at some voting centers.

At Andres Bello high school in central Caracas, a band of about 100 Chavistas on motorcycles, many with faces covered with bandannas, harassed opposition activists who wanted to witness the vote count to ensure there was no fraud.

Some of the Chavistas tried to steal phones and cameras from people recording video of the event.

The victor of Sunday’s balloting will face no end of hard choices.

Many factories operate at half-capacity because strict currency controls make it hard for them to pay for imported parts and materials. Business leaders say some companies verge on bankruptcy because they cannot extend lines of credit with foreign suppliers.

Chavez imposed currency controls a decade ago, trying to stem capital flight as his government expropriated large land parcels and dozens of businesses. Now, dollars sell on the black market at three times the official exchange rate and Maduro has had to devalue Venezuela’s currency, the bolivar, twice this year.

The bolivar devaluation and dollar shortages could push the economy into recession this year, according to HSBC Holdings PLC. The London-based bank expects Venezuela’s economy to contract 0.6 percent after previously forecasting growth of 0.5 percent,according to a second-quarter note to clients.

Meanwhile, consumers grumble that stores are short of milk, butter, corn flour and other staples. The government blames hoarding, while the opposition points at the price controls imposed by Chavez in an attempt to bring down double-digit inflation.

Capriles said he would reverse land expropriations, which he said had ruined many farms and forced Venezuela to import food after previously being a net exporter of beef, rice, coffee and other foods. But even Capriles said currency and price controls cannot be immediately scrapped without triggering a disastrous run on the bolivar.

High international oil prices remain a boon for Venezuela, underpinning its economy. Venezuela’s oil revenue increased 6 percent in 2012 to $93 billion from $88 billion the previous year, according to Central Bank figures.

Information for this article was contributed by Alexandra Olson, Frank Bajak, Fabiola Sanchez, Jorge Rueda, E. Eduardo Castillo, Christopher Toothaker and Vivian Sequera of The Associated Press; and by Jose Orozco, Charlie Devereux, Nathan Crooks and Randall Woods of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/15/2013

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