Chavez heads to vote win in Venezuela

[joe mac]

http://www.theage.com.au/news/World/...080859298.html

Anti-US Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was headed for a landslide re-election win on Sunday, according to early official results.

Chavez won 61 per cent, while Manuel Rosales, a governor of an oil-producing province who united the opposition, trailed with 38 per cent after 78 per cent of the vote had been counted, the National Electoral Council said.

If the trend continues, Chavez, 52, will have a strong mandate in his next six-year term to press his self-styled socialist revolution and forge an anti-US front in Latin America to counter what he calls the superpower's "imperialism."

A folksy politician who calls US President George W Bush the devil, Chavez is popular among Venezuela's majority poor because of his free spending of the OPEC country's oil bonanza on clinics and schools.

He swept to election victories in 1998 and 2000. Another win with a strong majority would give the Cuba ally a clear mandate to scrap presidential term limits and create a single-party that he expects to lead in power for decades.

He also aims to take further state control of the Caribbean country's top industry - oil.

Rosales, 53 and a father of 10, draws his main support from the middle and upper classes in the polarised nation.

While he lacks Chavez's charisma, he ran a disciplined campaign that exposed some weaknesses for the incumbent, such as Venezuelans' anger at rampant crime and their fears that he wants to drive the country toward Cuba-style communism.

At Rosales's campaign headquarters, angry supporters chanted "into the streets, into the streets" in a sign that some in the opposition could protest the results.

But hundreds of backers of Chavez, whose campaign slogan was "red, really red" to reflect his socialist credentials, descended on an upmarket Caracas neighbourhood that has been a political battleground and danced salsa.

"Rosales' butt ended up 'red, really red' after the whipping we gave him," said Iraida Martinez, a 39-year-old nurse.

Chavez, in power since 1999, has accused Rosales of planning to cry fraud if he loses and predicted he will try to create a political crisis to topple him. Rosales denies the charge and says he will accept the result if the election is fair.

Teodoro Petkoff, one of the most respected figures in the opposition, said the voting was carried out in a "satisfactory" manner and when irregularities emerged they were generally addressed by the electoral authorities.

The Organization of American States, which fielded dozens of election observers, applauded the "massive and peaceful" vote.

If he wins, Chavez will be the fourth leftist to win an election in Latin America in the last five weeks.

Backed by hard-line allies in Cuba and Bolivia, Chavez has bolstered ties with more moderate leftists in Brazil, Argentina, Ecuador and Nicaragua to form an anti-US front.