Manuel Rosales, the latest challenger to President Hugo Chavez, is unlikely to defeat the popular, fiery leftist in Venezuela’s next presidential election Dec. 3. Most polls show him trailing by double digits.
Yet supporters say the 53-year-old cattle rancher and state governor already has won a victory of sorts.
For the first time in years, Venezuela’s long-divided opposition has united behind a single leader, in this case a veteran politician known for his stumbling oratory but also a cool efficiency in running oil-rich Zulia state. To an opposition known for imploding and infighting in its previous attempts to oust Chavez, Rosales has given a glimmer of hope at a time when the Venezuelan leader has raised eyebrows for his radical behavior at the United Nations and elsewhere abroad.
A father of eight, Rosales has hammered Chavez on everything–from giving discounted oil to friendly nations while many Venezuelans remain impoverished, to failing to combat the nation’s startling violent crime rate, to mismanaging the country’s oil wealth.
Taking a page from Chavez’s populist playbook, Rosales has even proposed issuing a debit card called “Mi Negra” to about 3 million poor Venezuelans, allowing them to withdraw several hundred dollars per month from government coffers.
Venezuela’s Nixon
“Rosales is like [Richard] Nixon,” said Luis Vicente Leon, a pollster and political analyst. “He’s a poor speaker but a hard worker. He’s a very good politician.”
Many of Rosales’ most potent barbs are aimed at Chavez’s close ties with ailing Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Rosales has suggested that Chavez turned down an offer to debate him on orders from Castro. He has warned that Chavez is copying Castro’s autocratic rule.
“The government candidate follows Castro’s strategy blindly, to the extent that everything bad about Cuba is being imported into the country,” Rosales told the Spanish daily ABC.
Never short of words, Chavez responded that Rosales couldn’t outdebate a grade-schooler. The president refers to Rosales as a “small fry” and a lackey of Washington. He accuses the U.S. and the opposition of plotting to kill him before the Dec. 3 vote.
“If they dare do something, we will chase them to Miami,” Chavez told cheering supporters at a recent campaign rally. “I advise Mr. Danger [President Bush] to forget about these destabilization plans.”
In fact, Chavez appears less focused on Rosales than on Bush, whom the Venezuelan leader describes as his true adversary. In September, Chavez called Bush “the devil” in a speech at the United Nations.
That message is mirrored in pro-Chavez campaign banners draped across Caracas’ thoroughfares. “Vote against the devil–Vote against the empire,” the banners say.
Chavez’s campaign also has played to his strength by touting the billions of dollars his administration has spent on education, health care and other programs that have helped Venezuela’s poor majority.
He also has ramped up public spending as the election nears by sponsoring a free rock concert, opening a children’s hospital and touting other public works.
Early bonuses
This month Chavez handed out $3 billion in Christmas bonuses to public-sector workers, six weeks early. The government is allowing thousands of passengers each day to ride for free on a new commuter train from Caracas to the Tuy Valleys suburbs until January.
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Herman Nieto, a Caracas clothing store manager, said the 25-mile rail line saves him four hours of commuting each workday. Nieto is voting for Chavez.
“Chavez has opened the eyes of Venezuelans,” said Nieto, whose sales have soared 60 percent this year on the heels of Venezuela’s oil boom. “He’s not going to lose. We’ve got the champagne ready.”
While Rosales supporters argue that Chavez’s spending spree amounts to vote-buying, Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel dismissed the criticism as campaign rhetoric from a desperate opponent.
“The opposition has to say something,” Rangel said in a recent interview. “Here no one is discussing whether Chavez will win or lose. They are only discussing the margin of victory.”
But Teodoro Petkoff, a newspaper editor and opposition leader who is advising the Rosales campaign, said Chavez can be beaten if Rosales is able to gain the support of a large number of Venezuelans who say they will not participate in the election.
Many Venezuelans are fed up with politics, fear that fraud will mar the election or worry that Chavez supporters will seek retribution if they support Rosales.
Rosales is trying to counter the fear and apathy with the campaign slogan “Dare to change.”
The fact that Chavez is facing a challenge at all is a miracle given the opposition’s missteps in recent years.
A flamboyant and barrel-chested former paratrooper, Chavez, 52, has dominated Venezuelan politics since he first won the presidency in 1998 on a platform of razing the discredited and corrupt old political order that ran the country for four decades.
Chavez was re-elected in 2000 after pushing through a new constitution that lengthened the presidential term to six years from five.
Since then he survived a brief but bloody 2002 coup and a lengthy opposition-led national strike that failed to unseat him but devastated the economy.
Opposition parties failed again to oust Chavez in a 2004 recall referendum and boycotted last year’s legislative elections because of concern that the vote was not transparent.
Critics say opposition leaders have spent more time bickering among themselves and crying foul during elections than developing coherent policies to challenge Chavez’s petro-populism and anti-U.S. foreign policy.
“The opposition needs to be more humble,” said Ivo Hernandez, a political scientist at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas. “The opposition is comprised of many sectors that owned the country, and they don’t think that they’ve lost their touch [with the poor], but they have.”
Long political resume
From a regional power base in western Venezuela, Rosales’ political career spans a quarter-century and includes a stint as mayor of Maracaibo, one of Venezuela’s largest cities, and six years as a state governor. Yet his presidential campaign was foundering until his two main rivals, including Petkoff, dropped out of the race in August and united behind Rosales.
Leon, the pollster, said Rosales’ support has grown since August from about 8 percent to between 25 and 30 percent, while Chavez’s support has sagged during the same period to about 50 percent.
Leon blames Chavez’s declining poll numbers in part on the negative reaction to the UN speech.
Petkoff warned that Chavez would use a victory to further tighten his grip on power while preserving a “facade” of democracy.
If he wins in December, Chavez has vowed to amend the constitution to allow indefinite re-election. The constitution now allows two consecutive presidential terms.
But Vice President Rangel said Chavez is a committed democrat who respects private property, a multiparty political system and the United States.
“They [U.S. officials] have mistreated us permanently with aggressions, with attacks,” Rangel said. “We don’t want this fight. We don’t want it because we are not enemies of the United States.”
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