Pedestrians walk past a spray painting of Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles. REUTERS/Jorge Dan Lopez
If Venezuela’s marginalized opposition movement emerged from electoral obscurity as a respectable minority in 2012′s presidential race, the days since Chavez’s death are showing its leaders that running against no Chavez at all may, for the time being, prove even trickier.
The Socialist firebrand — whose funeral will take place Friday, and whose corpse will be put on permanent public display, à la Lenin — had ruled with only a brief interruption (a 2002 military coup) since first being elected 15 years ago. And his death has provided Henrique Capriles, the state governor of Miranda who pulled in 44 percent of the vote last year, a second shot at power. Venezuela’s constitution calls for elections if a president dies within the first four years of his term, denying Chavez’s hand-picked successor Vice President Nicolas Maduro the opportunity to take the reins for more than a brief time without facing the voters.
Under Capriles, the opposition has become a broader, middle-class party. He was regularly seen seeking out votes in slums and rural areas known to be Chavez strongholds last year, but failed to overcome the incredible advantages the incumbent enjoyed in terms of generous state media coverage and the attendant personality cult. And Chavez was, as many autocrats are, a master of delivering the goods when it suited his political purposes. He tapped into massive oil reserves and spent lavishly on social welfare programs that continue to provide tangible benefits to millions of voters (and amassed a considerable personal fortune along the way). His party infrastructure is sophisticated, visible everywhere, and well-funded. And even if his name isn’t on the ballot, people will know how to vote if they want things to keep going the Chavez way.
The question is, will they? Economists and outside observers point to a patchy electrical grid and a sluggish, inflation-wracked economy as weaknesses for Maduro, who isn’t as personally associated with all the entrenched safety-net programs Chavez put in place. But the lack of available media airspace makes it tough for any kind of fresh political message to be put across, and it’s possible harsh attacks would alienate voters so soon after Chavez’s death.Which isn’t to say that a strong showing by Capriles could not be used as a building block for a more credible candidacy later on, when the immediate emotional charge provided by Chavez’s death has faded. But one has to think that at the rate things are going now, waging an electoral campaign will be even harder in just a few years, after a popularly-elected Maduro has had some time to transfer the power and majesty of the Chavez apparatus unto himself.
In that sense, Capriles and the opposition should be expected to campaign vigorously and perhaps even get closer to the 50 percent mark than ever before. But to win over the public, they will need emotions to cool. Until that happens, they must tread softly. Comments made by Capriles after the president’s death speak to the delicate tightrope he must walk while seeking to draw in those who haven’t thought twice about their political allegiance in more than a decade.
“We were adversaries but never enemies,” he said of the late president, a man he failed to unseat in life and who could prove nearly as formidable in death.
