Hugo Chávez has said he wants to remain in office as Venezuela’s president until 2031. He moved six years closer to that goal on October 7, when voters re-elected him to a new term, by a margin of almost ten points over his centrist rival, Henrique Capriles of the Democratic Unity (MUD) coalition. With 90 percent of votes counted, the electoral authority said Mr. Chávez had obtained over 54 percent, to Mr. Capriles’ 45 percent. Turnout was a record 80 percent.
The opposition candidate conceded defeat in a speech to his supporters and congratulated the president on his victory. But he added that the results showed Venezuelans had “two visions” of how the country should be run, and reminded Mr. Chávez that being a good president meant “working for the union of all Venezuelans." Mr. Capriles, whose election slogan was “there is a way,” said he was convinced the way was still intact.
In his victory speech, from what he calls “the people’s balcony” of the presidential palace, Mr Chávez was conciliatory. He acknowledged the opposition’s democratic behavior in recognizing its defeat, saying it was “a very important step towards peace and cohabitation,” and called for “dialogue, debate and working together” for the country’s sake. The tone was very different from that of his re-election campaign, in which he showered Mr Capriles with insults, calling him a “pig,” a “fascist” and “mediocre” among other epithets. And he did not apologies for accusing the opposition repeatedly of planning to cry fraud if they lost, purportedly as a prelude to violence and even foreign intervention.
Mr. Chávez first tried to take power as the leader of a failed military coup in 1992. Six years later he was elected president, and he has been in office ever since. His stated aim is to make his “21st-century socialist revolution” irreversible and set up a “communal state,” which bears little relation to that enshrined in the 1999 constitution he himself fathered. That document also prohibited him from running for re-election this year, but in 2009 voters approved a referendum to remove presidential term limits.
Mr. Capriles promised to reverse the concentration of power in the presidency and restore the autonomy of parliament, the courts and other branches of state, as well as the powers of regional governors. But Mr. Chávez’s autocratic tendencies may well have been what enabled him to hold off Mr. Capriles’s surge late in the campaign. He openly deployed the entire apparatus of an oil-rich state, including the judiciary, media and the government’s payroll and services, to help his re-election effort. Doubts about whether the president has stacked the deck too much in his favor to be beaten at the ballot box are now likely to return.
The opposition will have to fend off such defeatism if it hopes to keep Mr. Chávez in check during his next term. After years of squabbling, Venezuela’s dozens of anti-chavista parties agreed to hold a primary to choose a single presidential candidate, which Mr Capriles won handily in February. He ran a disciplined and effective campaign, and has a powerful claim to remain as leader of the opposition. Keeping it united and motivated will not be easy. “To know how to win, one must know how to lose,” Mr. Capriles said on election day. The MUD has little time to lick its wounds: a round of elections for state governors are due in December.
Mr. Chávez, for his part, will not have much time to savor his victory. Despite strong oil-fueled growth this year, the country’s foreign-currency reserves are dwindling, thanks to profligate spending (not least on the election), a rising debt burden and dependency on a single commodity for export earnings and government income. Most analysts believe a big devaluation is inevitable, given an inflation rate of close to 20 percent and a black-market exchange rate almost three times as high as the official one.
Even if the president can surmount these economic woes, his own health remains a wild card. He was diagnosed last year with a so-far unspecified “abdominal” cancer, for which he has undergone three operations. He now claims to be cured. But he has not released any detailed medical information, and he did not campaign with the same vigor as in prior contests. The president has proven once again his remarkable capacity for political survival. Fending off the disease for another six-year term may turn out to be an even tougher battle.
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