written by Jaime Daremblum
Wednesday April 17, 2013
Even if his dubious election victory is allowed to stand, Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro is in big trouble.
This one wasn’t supposed to be close.
In the weeks leading up to Venezuela’s April 14 presidential election, polls consistently showed Nicolás Maduro with a double-digit lead over Henrique Capriles, the opposition figure who lost to Hugo Chávez by 11 points (55 percent to 44 percent) back in October. Maduro had served as foreign minister under the late populist demagogue; he had been named vice president — and thus designated as Chávez’s successor — after the October election; and he had formally taken over as interim president following his mentor’s death from cancer on March 5.
Maduro also enjoyed an enormous structural advantages over Capriles. After all, Chávez acolytes control the National Electoral Council, the National Assembly, the Supreme Court, the police, the military, and other public institutions. Not only did these institutions function as a massive get-out-the-vote operation for Maduro, they also allowed him to violate election rules with impunity. Meanwhile, he benefited from a laughably biased state-media apparatus and, like Chávez before him, flooded the airwaves with mandatory broadcasts (known as cadenas) that effectively served as free campaign commercials.
Noticeably lacking in charisma, the 50-year-old Maduro presented himself as the heir to the Chávez revolution, and he desperately tried to capitalize on sympathy for the late autocrat. His message wasn’t exactly subtle: “I am Chávez. We are all Chávez.” Indeed, Maduro called his predecessor the “Jesus Christ of Latin America” and suggested that he had played a posthumous role in selecting the first Latin American pope. In typical chavista fashion, Maduro denounced Capriles and his followers as “the heirs of Hitler,” even though Capriles (a practicing Catholic) comes from a family of Jewish Holocaust survivors.
In short: An oil-rich government with near-dictatorial powers used all of its vast institutional machinery to promote Maduro, slander Capriles, and guarantee a victory for the ruling party.
And yet, as Election Day drew closer, the polls narrowed. And when the actual votes were finally tallied, Maduro had garnered less than 51 percent, while his opponent had received 49 percent. The youthful Capriles, 40, thus affirmed that he is the most popular and charismatic opposition leader of the Chávez era. As for Maduro, his most powerful political rival within the ruling party, National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, tweeted that “the results oblige us to make a profound self-criticism.”
Capriles supporters are now marching in the streets and demanding a formal recount, as well they should. There were literally thousands of reported “irregularities,” which is not surprising in a country where the ruling regime is an elected autocracy. The Obama administration has called for a recount, as has the Organization of American States. If Maduro and his fellow Chávez loyalists continue to refuse, they are virtually inviting nonstop protests, which could eventually lead to serious violence.
But even if Maduro allows a recount and emerges as the clear winner, he will face daunting economic challenges. To understand his dilemma, consider the fascinating report published last week in the Wall Street Journal.
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