http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20100927/wl_nm/us_venezuela_electionCARACAS (Reuters) – Venezuela's opposition won a third of the seats in parliament and claimed a majority of the popular vote in elections on Sunday, a boost to its campaign to beat President Hugo Chavez at the 2012 presidential election.
Although Chavez's Socialist Party will have a majority in the 165-seat National Assembly, it fell short of its goal of winning the two thirds needed to pass major laws and make appointments to the Supreme Court and election authorities without the support of its foes.
The newly-united opposition Democratic Unity umbrella group said it won 52 percent of votes in the election. If confirmed, it would be a symbolic blow to the socialist Chavez in the 12th year of his rule of South America's top oil exporter.
"We are the majority!" sang opposition supporters after the results were announced in the early hours of Monday.
After years of defeats and missteps, opposition leaders will now focus on trying to topple the man they call an autocrat at the ballot box in 2012, and will use their group in parliament to step up the pressure on Chavez.
"This is a huge result for the opposition. They exceeded even their own expectations," David Smilde, a Venezuela expert from the University of Georgia, told Reuters.
With the last results still coming in, however, Chavez was close to the three fifths of seats needed to give him special decree powers with which he could bypass parliament in implementing socialist reforms.
A baseball-mad former tank soldier who rose from a poor rural childhood, Chavez first tried to take power in a 1992 coup and has lost only one election since he won the presidency at the ballot box in 1998.
He has become one of the world's most recognizable politicians, taking the crown from Cuba's Fidel Castro as Latin America's leading critic of Washington and nationalizing foreign oil companies in South America's top crude exporter.
Chavez is widely accused of using bullying tactics against his opponents, although he can argue his democratic credentials are burnished by the opposition gains in Sunday's vote.
He is still the country's most popular politician but his approval ratings have been hit by a deep recession, soaring violent crime and electricity shortages.
Election authorities said on Monday that Chavez's Socialist Party won at least 94 seats in the Assembly and that Democratic Unity took at least 60 seats. Five seats went to other parties and the results from the remaining six were not yet in.
OPPOSITION HAPPY
A source at the electoral council backed the opposition's claim of winning 52 percent of the popular vote.
"This gives us a lot of political power," said Armando Briquett, spokesman for Democratic Unity.
The favorable outcome for opponents of Chavez's nationalizations and socialist economic policies will likely be welcomed by investors with money in Venezuelan bonds. However, Chavez is unlikely to cool his revolutionary zeal for long.
He sought to put a brave face on the election, declaring on his Twitter site that it was a "new victory for the people."
The government was always likely to get a higher percentage of seats than votes due to changes in electoral districts and voting rules that favored it.
Faced with the prospect of negotiating with politicians he views as bourgeois capitalists, Chavez may yet move to limit the power of parliament. He could devolve some lawmaking capacity to community groups loyal to him or pass key legislation before the new legislators take office in January.
Chavez stripped powers from opposition figures when they won key states and cities in regional elections two years ago.
Chavez, 56, was not on the ballot for Sunday's election but he was the dominant figure throughout the campaign, in yet another vote that was essentially a referendum on his rule.
While not an outright defeat for Chavez, the result shows Venezuela's opposition forces are galvanizing.
Analysts are unsure whether Chavez might now want to radicalize his self-styled "Bolivarian Revolution," named for Venezuelan independence hero Simon Bolivar, or try to soften policies to appeal to the many who voted against him.
"He has always been impossible to predict," said a senior Western diplomat in Caracas.
The election result signals the unofficial start of the presidential race in which Chavez hopes to extend what will by then be nearly 14 years in power.
Investors have paid close attention to the vote, particularly because debt issued by the government and state oil company PDVSA offers very high yields for those willing to bear what some consider a significant chance of default.
For the opposition, the election has given them their first significant presence in parliament for years.
They boycotted the last vote in 2005 but managed to unite this year and will hope to replicate that in 2012.
"It's going to be a hostile parliament, that's for sure," Guillermo Miguelena, the Caracas secretary-general of the opposition Democratic Action Party, told Reuters. "Now we need to keep the unity we have achieved."
(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne, Enrique Andres Pretel, Deisy Buitrago, Eyanir Chinea, Marianna Parraga; Editing by Kieran Murray)
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
