VENEZUELA

Chávez boosting his loyalist candidates

Venezuela's opposition political parties have been unable to settle on which candidates will face President Hugo Chávez's candidates in key November elections.

BY TYLER BRIDGES

tbridges@MiamiHerald.com

The vote will set the stage for Chávez loyalists to win gubernatorial and municipal races in November while shutting out candidates from opposition parties, which have been hampered by infighting and disorganization.

To be sure, Chávez is facing his own difficulties in selecting single candidates for each race.

Amid grumbling by party faithful, Chávez engineered special rules to maximize his influence and ensure that his anointed candidates emerge victorious.

Chávez decreed that candidates could not run campaign ads in privately owned newspapers or television stations. Nor could they attack the other candidates.

Both rules favor well-known candidates, such as Chávez's brother, Adán, a former minister of education who is on the ballot for governor of Barinas, the president's home state and where his father has been governor for the past eight years.

Other party candidates in Barinas have complained that Chávez is trying to make sure his brother wins the nomination.

Candidates will win the primary elections outright by collecting more than 50 percent of the vote or, absent that, holding at least a 15 percent advantage over the second-place finisher.

In races where no candidate meets that threshold, party leaders will select the candidate.

It's not clear that the party will actually announce Sunday's results. Observers note that authorities never announced the final results from a Dec. 2 referendum that rejected Chávez's proposals for major constitutional changes.

''Chávez will decide,'' said Fausto Maso, a Caracas-based political commentator. ``He created a primary system that he controls.''

Some 4,700 Socialist Party candidates are running to be mayor of 337 cities and a further 330 are running to be the party nominee in the 22 governor's races.

''The rules might produce discontent,'' said Steve Ellner, professor of Venezuela's Eastern University in Puerto La Cruz.

The opposition has yet to exploit Chávez's defeat in December, when hundreds of thousands of his supporters showed their dissatisfaction by staying home on a referendum in which Chávez wanted them to remove the ban that prevents him from running for reelection and to make it easier for the government to expropriate private property. It was Chávez's first electoral defeat.

Chávez's political ambitions have been helped by infighting among Venezuela's opposition political parties, which have failed to capitalize on his stunning December defeat and subsequent drop in popularity to 50 percent.

The opposition remains an afterthought to most Venezuelans. Their parties have stumbled in their pledge to settle on single candidates for each of the gubernatorial and mayoral races in November.

The November elections are winner-takes-all, so failure of the opposition parties to set aside their differences could hand several victories to pro-Chávez candidates.

''The opposition is up against the wall,'' said Caracas newspaper columnist Manuel Malaver. ``They don't have the luxury of losing again. They have to resolve the problem.''

Pollster Luis Vicente León said a poll in February showed that only 18 percent of the public identifies with the opposition. But only 27 percent identified themselves as Chávez supporters.

About 50 percent of the voters said they are neither with the opposition nor with Chávez, what in Venezuela are called ``ni-nis.''

''The November elections create the opportunity for new leaders,'' León said.

Still, he said he doesn't expect Chávez's opponents to win more than one-third of the 22 governorships, although they stand to win such big states as Carabobo and Zulia. Chávez's candidates currently hold all but two of Venezuela's governorships, so he is certain to lose ground.

One of the test cases for the opposition is the mayor's race for Chacao, the wealthiest community in Caracas, home to 72,000 residents and many of the foreign embassies in Venezuela.

Three opposition candidates are vying to succeed the popular Leopoldo López, including two members of the same party, A New Time.

One candidate, Liliana Hernández, has the support of party leaders. Another, Emilio Graterón, has López's backing.

In Barinas, in a hopeful sign for the opposition, three Chávez opponents seeking the nomination for the governor's race used a poll to settle on a single candidate.

Julio César Reyes, mayor of the city of Barinas, finished first and will be the gubernatorial candidate. Wilmer Azuaje, a member of Congress who broke with the president and accused his father and brothers of misusing public funds, finished second and will run for mayor of Barinas. Frenchy Díaz, the mayor of another city, finished third and will run for Congress.

''We've provided an example for the rest of the states,'' Azuaje said. ``Everyone has to put their own political ambitions to the side.''

But in Táchira, a state that borders on Colombia and where Chávez is unpopular, the eight opposition candidates are still trying to decide whether to resort to a poll or a primary election. They have agreed on one thing.

''We agree we have to have a single candidate,'' said Gustavo Azócar, a popular television news-talk host and candidate for A New Time.