{{Voters who kept Hugo Chavez in office for 14 years decide Sunday whether to elect the devoted lieutenant he chose to carry on the revolution that endeared him to the poor but that many Venezuelans believe is ruining the nation.}}
Nicolas Maduro sought to ride Chavez’s endorsement to victory with a campaign nearly bereft of promises but freighted with personal attacks that was otherwise little more than an unflagging tribute to the polarizing leader who died of cancer March 5.
The 50-year-old longtime Chavez foreign minister pinned his hopes on the immense loyalty for his boss among millions of poor beneficiaries of a socialist government’s largesse and the heft of a state apparatus that Chavez skillfully consolidated.
The governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela deployed a well-worn, get-out-the-vote machine spearheaded by loyal state employees.
It also enjoyed a pervasive state media apparatus as part of a near monopoly on institutional power.
Challenger Henrique Capriles’ aides accused Chavista loyalists in the judiciary of putting them at glaring disadvantage.
Prosecutors and state regulators impoverished the campaign and opposition broadcast media by targeting them with unwarranted fines and prosecutions, they said
Capriles’ main campaign weapon was thus jujutsu: To simply point out “the incompetence of the state,” as he put it to reporters in a news conference Saturday night.
Maduro was still favored, but his early big lead in opinion polls halved over the past two weeks in a country struggling with the legacy of Chavez’s management of the world’s largest oil reserves.
Many Venezuelans believe his confederates not only squandered but plundered much of the $1 trillion in oil revenues during his time in office.
People are fed up with chronic power outages, crumbling infrastructure, unfinished public works projects, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages and rampant crime that has given Venezuela among the world’s highest homicide and kidnapping rates.
Associated Press
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