Venezuelan president Chávez gains ground in recall vote

By Gary Marx
Chicago Tribune

LESLIE MAZOCH / AP Hundreds of thousands of people flooded Caracas, Venezuela, yesterday to rally in support of President Hugo Chávez.

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Pollsters and experts say Chávez, whose popularity plummeted in the face of a 2002 coup attempt and a punishing national strike, has recovered through heavy government spending on literacy, health care and other programs aimed at the poor, his political base.

Experts say the firebrand president also is winning supporters through his no-holds-barred campaign style. The opposition has failed to rally behind a single leader and is struggling to offer a credible alternative to Chávez's self-styled revolution.

"I see a very clear trend in favor of President Chávez," said Luis Vicente Leon, a top Venezuelan pollster and Chávez critic. "I'm not saying that he is ahead of the opposition now, but Chávez is improving. The two groups are very, very close."

The stakes are high for Venezuela's 25 million citizens and for the United States, which receives a large quantity of its oil from this South America nation, the world's No. 5 oil exporter.

	President Hugo Chávez is winning supporters.

Michael Shifter, vice president for policy at the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington, said U.S. officials would like Chávez to lose, but they also want to avoid a complete breakdown of authority, which could disrupt oil supplies during a time of near-record prices and Middle East unrest.

The Bush administration long has been at loggerheads with Chávez, who has accused U.S. officials of plotting to oust him and providing financial support to his political opposition. He also has angered U.S. officials by forming a close alliance with Cuba President Fidel Castro and for opposing a U.S.-backed, hemisphere-wide free-trade agreement.

Leon said Chávez's support stands at about 50 percent, a huge improvement for a leader whose popularity rating was about 30 percent a little more than a year ago.

Alfredo Keller, another pollster and Chávez critic, said his poll, taken about a month ago, showed Chávez with 45 percent support and the opposition with 34 percent; 21 percent were undecided.

Keller said he thinks most of the undecided oppose Chávez but are reluctant to share their views with pollsters for fear of government reprisals.

Hundreds of thousands of people, many bused in from outside the capital, flooded Caracas yesterday in a huge show of support for Chávez.

The president's supporters, wearing red, the symbol of Chávez's self-styled revolution, overflowed a central avenue where he addressed the crowd.

Opposition sympathizers held smaller events in the eastern part of the city.

Keller and others are concerned that a close vote could be challenged by the loser and spark violence, especially in Venezuela's highly polarized political climate in which charges of fraud and unfair electioneering have plagued the campaign.

Dozens of Venezuelans have been killed in political violence during nearly two years of strikes and demonstrations.

"What matters a lot is the margin of victory," Shifter said. "I think that, if it's a close election either way, the chances are that one side won't accept the vote and the chances of violence are greater.

"This is the most volatile situation in Latin America today," he said.

The opposition must secure at least 3.76 million votes to unseat Chávez, a former army paratrooper who won the presidency in 1998 and was re-elected two years later. The total represents the number of votes for Chávez in 2000.

New elections will be held within 30 days if the opposition wins the recall referendum. If Chávez wins, he will finish his term, which ends in 2006.

Experts say there are several issues clouding the balloting, including the revelation that the government has registered more than 1 million new voters in recent months, something Chávez opponents see as an attempt to swing the election.

Others question the government's decision to use a touch-screen electronic voting system by Smartmatic of Boca Raton, Fla. The system never has been used in an election.

Aviel Rubin, a computer-science professor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, warned that electronic voting machines are unreliable and vulnerable to manipulation.

But Antonio Mugica, Smartmatic's chief executive officer, said the system's security measures are impenetrable and expressed confidence that the 20,000 voting machines would work without a glitch.

He said about 5,200 machines were tested last month and worked perfectly.

Details on yesterday's rallies were provided by Reuters.

Copyright © 2004 The Seattle Times Company

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