Venezuela's Chávez Wins Decisive Victory
Leftist President Given Another Six Years To Consolidate His 'Bolivarian Revolution'

By Juan Forero
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, December 4, 2006

CARACAS, Venezuela, Dec. 3 -- By an overwhelming margin, Venezuelans reelected President Hugo Chávez on Sunday, further extending a presidency that began when the former paratrooper was swept into power eight years ago, intent on overturning Venezuela's old social order. Chávez will receive another six years in office to broaden his leftist revolution and contest American initiatives across Latin America.

"Today is a new era," the fiery populist leader told screaming supporters. "Venezuela is red, very red."

With 78 percent of the votes counted by 10 p.m., electoral authorities announced that Chávez, 52, had secured 61.3 percent of the vote to 38.4 percent for Manuel Rosales, whose candidacy united a fractured opposition that included former guerrillas, industrialists and right-wing radicals, but had only four months to gather momentum. Minutes after the National Electoral Council announced that Chávez had garnered 5.9 million votes to 3.7 million for Rosales, the president appeared at the balcony of the presidential palace.

Euphoric supporters, ignoring a downpour, burst into the streets, waving flags, shooting off fireworks and chanting pro-Chávez slogans.

"Everything has been completed, the great victory of the Bolivarian revolution," Chávez said as rain soaked him and close aides on the balcony. "It's another great victory: a victory of love, a victory of peace, a victory of hope. It's a victory for all Venezuela. May Venezuela be victorious always."

With the win, Chávez's Bolivarian revolution will last until at least 2013, although Chávez told reporters on Thursday that a change to the constitution could permit him to rule even longer.

"I'm not planning to say in the constitution, 'Hugo Chávez will remain in the presidency until he dies,' because that would be perverse," said Chávez, who under the law can serve only one more term. "It's very different to study the possibility of indefinite reelection. It will always be the will of the people."

Rosales, 53, later conceded defeat without declaring fraud, as opponents had done in the last major election they lost to Chávez, a recall referendum two years ago. Rosales did, however, say that his campaign believed the electoral council's figures were off and that the final results were tighter.

"The truth is that though the margin is closer, we recognize that today we were defeated. But we continue to fight. We will remain in the street," he said. "It's not time to give up."

Earlier in the evening, an aide close to Rosales, Julio Montoya, called early voting estimates "false and manipulated," without offering proof. Other officials in the Rosales campaign said voting equipment malfunctioned at several polling sites and that there were delays in pro-Rosales districts.

Authorities with the five-member National Electoral Council said they had not found serious discrepancies.

"Everything is perfectly normal in the country," Vicente Díaz, who is considered partial to the opposition, told reporters Sunday night. Observers from the European Union, the Atlanta-based Carter Center and the Organization of American States monitored the vote and reported only isolated incidents by early Sunday night.

The Chávez victory further consolidates the tide of leftist politicians who have won office in Latin America in recent years, including a former labor leader in Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva; Michelle Bachelet, a market-friendly socialist in Chile; and Evo Morales, the indigenous leader of Bolivia. Although Colombia, Peru and Mexico this year elected pro-trade, pro-U.S. presidents, leftist leaders who criticize market reforms and sharply question the Bush administration's policies in the region were elected last month in Nicaragua and Ecuador.

But Venezuela's government is the most defiantly anti-Bush, with Chávez making theatrical accusations about U.S. designs on Venezuela's oil deposits, even though many of the biggest producers here are American multinationals.

Chávez's government will ensure that Venezuela, which says it has the largest oil reserves outside the Middle East, remains a price hawk in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries. The president has also said he would solidify Venezuela's relations with Cuba and Iran, countries the Bush administration is working to isolate. Chávez, who survived a 2002 coup that the White House tacitly endorsed, often accuses Washington of backing undemocratic opposition groups.

"This is another defeat for the devil," Chávez said, referring to Bush with a term he used to describe his U.S. counterpart at the United Nations in September. "Venezuela has independence. Venezuela is free. Venezuela will never be a North American colony."

With bugles and fireworks awakening voters across Caracas and beyond early Sunday morning, Venezuelans flocked to 32,000 voting booths guarded by 125,000 soldiers and reservists. Chávez drove himself in a red Volkswagen Beetle to cast his ballot at the 23rd of January housing development, not far from the presidential palace.

"I feel very happy, very happy," he said. He added that with this election, he has faced off and defeated his opponents four times, including his first win in 1998, an election in 2000 after the constitution was changed to permit him to be elected to a six-year term, and the 2004 recall that left his foes demoralized.

With oil prices having reached historic highs, and Chávez's Fifth Republic Movement in control of the National Assembly and other institutions, the government has funneled billions of dollars into education, health and nutrition programs. Venezuela's economy has been roaring, growing at 18 percent in 2004 and 9.3 percent last year.

Although private investment has dwindled and half of Venezuelans work in the black market, the government's spending has put money in banks and in people's pockets. Business sectors dependent upon government contracts are booming, and the stock index on Friday had its biggest increase in nearly four years on the strength of the belief that Chávez would win.

In a recent opinion poll conducted by Ipsos for the Associated Press, 66 percent of respondents said they approved of Chávez's administration. The poll showed that although most Venezuelans see Chávez as authoritarian, they also overwhelmingly approve of his social policies, which have given a voice to a vast underclass that had felt forgotten under previous governments.

In Caño Amarillo, a working-class neighborhood near downtown Caracas, several people said they voted for the president, overlooking concerns they had about crime and his combative style.

"I think the president has done what he said he would do," said Jose Medina, 54, a schoolteacher. "He's put the social policies above everything else."

Another voter, Pedro Fiaggio, 76, summed up his support for Chávez by rattling off the programs that benefit him and his wife, Lesbia, 62 -- a healthy pension, subsidized food and educational programs for seniors. He said the opposition would never have offered the same.

"They are people who are always out for their own self-interest," he said. "We didn't have a real vote with them."

The opposition, which has suffered a series of setbacks since the coup, had hoped to appeal to voters by focusing on issues such as spiraling crime, alleged corruption and unchecked spending. Rosales, governor of Zulia state, the historic heart of Venezuela's oil industry, had proposed a populist handout program to cut into Chávez 's support base.

"The future of Venezuela is at stake," Rosales told supporters as he cast his ballot.

There were, to be sure, millions of Venezuelans who agreed that a change was needed. "We've had eight years without work, nothing stable," said Victor Castellanos, 53, a construction worker.

Another voter, Marco Ravelo, 39, a cabdriver, said he was tired of Chávez's obsession with the Bush administration, as well as the government's generous outlay of aid to poor countries. "We need better relations with other countries," he said. "Chávez divides countries. He gives away all this oil, and we still have poverty and misery here."