By Brian Ellsworth
CARACAS, Nov 24 (Reuters) - Venezuela's opposition has its
best chance in years to build a challenge to President Hugo
Chavez after wins in state elections over the weekend but needs
to build a stronger national leadership and policy platform.
The opposition's strong showing in urban areas means its
leaders can capitalize on frustration in shantytowns over
Chavez allies' shoddy administration by showing they can tackle
day-to-day problems such as crime and trash collection.
Success in tackling those issues would give opposition
leaders a real chance at weakening Chavez, and killing off his
hopes of extending his rule beyond 2013, when his current term
ends.
But a hodgepodge movement that includes student activists,
technocrats and old-guard politicians will struggle to mount a
threat to Chavez unless they unite behind a charismatic leader
or a political project that rivals his socialist "revolution."
Chavez, an anti-U.S. socialist who wants to rule for
decades, is not afraid to weaken state government leaders by
cutting off funds, using technicalities to keep them out of
office, and appointing regional officials above them in the
OPEC nation.
Chavez's allies won 17 of 22 states in a showing of his
continued popularity, but opposition candidates made gains by
taking five states and the OPEC nation's three largest cities
that in all hold about half the country's registered voters.
"Starting right now, we have to move from being an
anti-(Chavez) opposition to becoming a 'pro-' movement that has
a positive attitude building a better future for Venezuela from
the center and not from the extremes," said Leopoldo Lopez, a
young star of the opposition who was sidelined from running on
Sunday by the legal maneuvers of Chavez's allies.
"We should not be confrontational but aim to bring people
together in the center," he said.
The opposition aims to demonstrate competent management in
chaotic ramshackle slums where overflowing sewers, mountains of
trash and freewheeling gangsters have taken the shine off
Chavez's Midas touch among the poor.
And the new leaders have to avoid letting national politics
distract from the need for progress on day-to-day issues, a
trap that has snared Chavez as grandiose visions of revolution
overshadow basic issues such as adequate municipal services.
BACK TO BREAD-AND-BUTTER
Sunday's vote extended the opposition's ballot-box
momentum. Last December, they defeated Chavez in a referendum
on reforms that would have expanded his powers.
The wins have revived an opposition whose traditional
parties were pushed aside when Chavez took office in 1999 and
beaten down by repeated blunders including a failed coup in
2002, a grueling two-month oil strike and election boycotts in
2004 and 2005.
Falling energy prices threaten to derail Chavez's
oil-financed social programs that bolster his popularity
ratings as he renews a push for reforms allowing him to run for
reelection.
But the opposition remains dispersed, with no single party
carrying more than one state in Sunday's elections and little
organizational capacity to match Chavez's well-greased
get-out-the-vote machine that reaches even the most remote
urban slums and rural backwaters.
Just as it stopped Lopez this time, the government has said
it may block rivals from running in the future, and Chavez has
vowed to jail opposition leader Manuel Rosales.
Chavez can also pressure rival governors who rely heavily
on the central government's distribution of oil income.
He has moved to emasculate the opposition in power. In
recent months, he stripped Caracas' hospitals and police force
from the mayor's responsibilities and decreed that he can pick
local officials that could supplant the work of rivals.
"Venezuela has a highly centralized political system in
which governors and mayors play a very marginal role," said
Patrick Esteruelas of the Eurasia Group in New York.
"The opposition has won visibility and it was won presence,
but it has not won power."
(Additional reporting by Fabian Andres Cambero and Saul
Hudson; Editing by Saul Hudson and Kieran Murray)
- 
- 
- 
Welcome,
Guest!
News
