Venezuela's new president Nicolas Maduro faces tough challenges following narrow win.
| Autor | Gaudin, Andres |
Forty days after the death of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, the larger-than-life head of the Revolucion Bolivariana who dominated politics in the last 14 years of Venezuelan democracy, voters in the Caribbean country had to return to the ballot boxes to elect a new president for the 2013-2019 term. Everything indicated that the governing party would repeat its success in the Oct. 7 election (NotiSur, Oct. 19, 2012), when, with more than 55% of the vote, Chavez buried the electoral aspirations of Henrique Capriles, who received 44.3%. However, Nicolas Maduro, the Revolucion Bolivariana candidate hand-picked by Chavez when he was becoming aware that he would not survive, defeated the opposition leader by only 1.83%.
What would be a sufficient advantage in countries like France, which in the last quarter of the 20th century was essentially split in half politically, or the US, where in 1960 John F. Kennedy defeated Richard Nixon by 0.1% (49.7% to 49.6%), does not seem sufficient in a country where Chavez had led everyone to expect that he would always win handily.
The narrowness of Maduro's win will cause the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) to undertake a process of self-criticism to find reasons to explain the scare it received. And it also led Capriles to return to his violent past, such as when he encouraged the coup against Chavez in 2002. This time, he refused to accept the electoral results and called on supporters to "take to the streets and vent their anger." Seven people died and several PSUV offices were burned when the opposition "vented its anger" in Caracas and other cities.
At first glance, Chavismo knows that at the root of this vote loss are problems such as inflation and insecurity--but not many more--as well as failings of the administration. In one of his last appearances, Chavez warned, "We cannot continue inaugurating factories that are like an island surrounded by a sea of capitalism because the sea will swallow them." He added, "We have to change course."
In addition to those problems, other factors contributed to increasing social discontent. The government alleges that the right worked actively to exacerbate society's negative mood through an elaborate plan to create shortages of essential goods, cause power blackouts, and wage a relentless campaign of unsubstantiated charges against Maduro that, nevertheless, were repeated and spread by the media. That campaign, they say, caused some voters to desert...
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