A week before the vote, Caracas was a sea of blue as Manuel Rosales supporters listened to him make his final speech. The next day it became an ocean of red as Hugo Chávez supporters poured out of the barrios to show solidarity with the president.
But despite impressive support for Rosales most polls put Chávez way out in front. He promises to “deepen the revolution” and encourage more community organisation.
Rosales offers a return to “normal” relations with the US and a formal social security system. But his offer to keep the successful socialist programmes of the government cuts no ice with the urban poor, who believe Chávez has governed in their interest.
And Rosales is unlikely to peel off support from Chávez supporters. He was a signatory to the 2002 Carmona decree, which attempted to legitimise the brief overthrow of Chávez and ordered the dissolution of the constitution. Even shanty-town critics of Chávez recognise him as their legitimate president. Nor did Rosales’s comments to a Miami television station win him the defectors he needed when he said that “the majority of [Chavez supporters] are parasites who live off the government and are subsidised by the state”.
Already, there are rumours of protest demonstrations planned for the day after the election. The opposition will claim that Chávez won fraudulently. More worrying may be the divisions within Chavismo itself. Pressures in the Bolivarian movement will increase and something will have to give.
One such stress is within the Unión Nacional de Trabajadores (UNT), the national trade union, which until now has been supportive of the government. Many on the left want an independent UNT, but it is obviously more useful to the government to have the workers’ uncritical support. After the election, the gloves will be off and the left is expected to win power in the unions.
But Chávez wants foreign firms to invest heavily in Venezuela over the next few years. The last thing he needs is industrial unrest.
Content from our partners
Related
