Chávez Wins a Third Term in Venezuela Amid Historically High Turnout

By WILLIAM NEUMAN, Published: October 7, 2012 -- Source

People lined up to cast their votes in the Catia neighborhood of Caracas on Sunday.

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez, long a fiery foe of Washington, won re-election on Sunday, facing down cancer and the strongest electoral challenge of his nearly 14 years in office and gaining a new mandate to deepen his socialist revolution.

Though his margin of victory was much narrower than in past elections, he still won handily. With 90 percent of the votes tallied, Mr. Chávez received 54 percent, to 45 percent for his opponent, Henrique Capriles Radonski, the national election commission said. Fireworks erupted in Caracas after the news, and Chávez supporters celebrated in the streets.

Still, after a spirited campaign, the polarizing Mr. Chávez finds himself governing a changed country. He is an ailing and politically weakened winner facing an emboldened opposition that grew stronger and more confident as the voting neared, and at times seemed to have an upset victory within reach.

Mr. Chávez has said that he would move forward even more aggressively to create his version of socialism in Venezuela in a new six-year term, although his pledges were short on specifics.

His health, though, remains a question mark. He has undergone several rounds of treatment for cancer in the last fifteen months, but has refused to make public essential details of his illness. If he overcomes the disease and serves out his new term to its end in 2019, he will have been in power for two full decades.

Toward the end of the campaign, facing pressure from Mr. Capriles, he pledged to make his government more efficient and to pay more attention to the quality of government programs like education. He even made appeals for the middle class and the opposition to join in his revolution.

But Mr. Chávez spent much of the year insulting and trying to provoke Mr. Capriles and his followers. And on Sunday night, he had to face the fact that the people he taunted as squalid good-for-nothings, little Yankees and fascists, turned out to represent nearly half the electorate.

As the opposition’s momentum grew, Mr. Chávez’s insults seemed to lose their sting. By the end of the campaign, young people in Caracas were wearing colorful T-shirts that said “majunche” or good-for-nothing, Mr. Chávez’s favorite taunt.

Mr. Capriles was subdued on Sunday night, congratulating Mr. Chávez and saying he hoped the president would see the result as “the expression today of a country with two visions, and to be president means working to solve the problems of all Venezuelans.”

He appeared poised to carry on his fight in the elections for state governors in December. “You should all feel proud, do not feel defeated,” he told supporters.

Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a research institute in Washington, called the presidential election “a fundamental turning point.” He said Mr. Chávez was “going to have to deal with a very different society than he dealt with in his last term, a society that’s awakened and more organized and more confident.”

Even so, there are risks for the opposition, a fragile coalition with a history of destructive infighting, especially after an election defeat. Mr. Capriles will have to keep this fractious amalgam of parties from the left, right and center together in order to take advantage of the new ground they have gained.

“The opposition has more power, it feels more support,” said Elsi Fernandes, a school teacher, who voted for Mr. Capriles Sunday morning in Catia, a poor neighborhood in Caracas. “The difference is that we’re not going to stay with our arms crossed.”

The turnout was more than 80 percent on Sunday, the highest in decades, the election commission said. People stood in line for hours, although the voting appeared in most cases to run smoothly.

Venezuela uses a touch-screen electronic voting system, and voters are identified with a digital thumbprint reader; technical problems at some polling places caused long delays and, in some, a resort to backup paper ballots. Polling places were told to keep working until everyone on line at closing time had a chance to vote.

Venezuela is mired in problems, including out-of-control violent crime, crumbling roads and bridges, power outages that regularly plague much of the country outside the capital. Oil production, the country’s mainstay, has plateaued in recent years, and other exports have not picked up the slack. The overall economy grew this year, largely because of a huge pre-election boost in government spending, but clouds loom. A devaluation of the Venezuelan currency, the bolívar, is widely seen as inevitable, and inflation, while lower than last year, remains stubbornly high.

Mr. Chávez has trumpeted his programs to help the poor, and has pointed to a sharp reduction in the number of people living in poverty. But he has governed during a phenomenal rise in oil prices, which have soared from $10 in 1998, the year before he took office, to more than $100 in recent years and the high $80s now, pouring huge amounts of revenue into Venezuela. Mr. Capriles, who has served as a legislator, mayor and governor, campaigned almost nonstop, seeking to contrast his energetic style and youth with the reduced schedule of Mr. Chávez, who received a diagnosis of cancer in 2011 and is obviously less robust than in the past.

Mr. Chávez has kept most details of his condition secret, refusing to say exactly what kind of cancer he has or in exactly what parts of his body it is located. He received chemotherapy last summer after an operation to remove a tumor, but the cancer returned and he had another operation in February, followed by radiation therapy. The operations and treatments were performed in Cuba, taking Mr. Chávez out of Venezuela for extended periods.

His health, and whether he was well enough to serve a new six-year term, always loomed over the campaign, but it receded as an issue as Mr. Chávez gradually increased his public appearances. Still, he never threw himself into campaigning at the frenzied pace of Mr. Capriles, and he often appeared to be saving his energy.

Opposition to Mr. Chávez has long been divided and easily manipulated by Mr. Chávez, a master politician who kept his rivals off balance. Mr. Capriles changed that. He crisscrossed the country, campaigning in places long considered bastions of support for Mr. Chávez, including urban slums and poor rural areas. He told voters that he was the future and Mr. Chávez the past.

Mr. Chávez dismissed Mr. Capriles as an unworthy opponent, called him names like little Yankee and fascist and accused him of lying about wanting to continue Mr. Chávez’s social programs. He called Mr. Capriles a right-wing oligarch in disguise who sought to bring back the bad old days of a Venezuela run by the rich.

Many people, though, said they were simply ready for a change.

“This government has had 14 years in power,” said Álvaro Hernández, 19, a student, before voting in central Caracas. “How much more does it need? It’s going to be more of the same. Too much crime, unemployment, lack of housing.”

But in Catia, María Elena Severine, 59, who works as a cleaner in a bank, said that Mr. Chávez was still as fresh a candidate as when he first ran in 1998. She lives in a rental apartment but hopes someday to be given a new home government-built home.

“I like my president,” she said. “He is the revolution. He is change.”

María Eugenia Díaz and Girish Gupta contributed reporting from Caracas, and María Iguarán from Cumaná, Sucre State.

Washington must be most disappointed. They have to face Chavez for 6 more long years.

Washington is surely not disappointed. He means they have no worry with venezuela since he is the worry Venezuela has.  The Us does not worry about nations unless they are direct threats to them.

Chavez is now a very ill man.  He is just putting on a show during the election campaign by dancing up and giving long speeches. But he is not very strong. I don't think he would be able to keep up with the pressure of the job in the next  5 years.  Guyana should seek a permanent solution to the border with him and Cuba before he steps down.