Capriles closing in on Chávez in Venezuela presidential race

Posted on Tuesday, 09.11.12

Venezuela Elections

Capriles closing in on Chávez in Venezuela presidential race

Venezuelan opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has been — literally —
sprinting around the nation to shore up votes for the Oct. 7
presidential election. But will his energetic campaign be enough to
overcome President Hugo Chávez

BY JIM WYSS
jwyss@MiamiHerald.com

QUIRIQUIRE, Venezuela -- Henrique Capriles pushed into the back of his
campaign van and pulled off a sweat-drenched shirt — his third that day.
He had red lipstick smeared across his cheek.

With less than a month to go before pivotal presidential elections, the
40-year-old former governor is in a mad dash to visit at least 300
communities before the Oct. 7 vote.

His campaign stops often seem more like athletic events than political
rallies: he jogs, and sometimes sprints through towns blowing kisses,
giving high-fives and flinging caps off his head into the crowd.

Outspent by his rival and marginalized by the state-run media, Capriles
is counting on this grassroots effort to overcome one of the most
powerful men in the hemisphere.

President Hugo Chávez, 58, has been in power for almost 14 years and has
honed a formidable reelection machine that can shuttle thousands of
supporters to his rallies and flood the airwaves with his political
events. The courts and the National Election Council seem to march in
lockstep with his campaign, Capriles said. It often feels like he's
running against the state, not a man.

Even so, Capriles is convinced his brand of guerrilla campaigning, which
has taken him to long-neglected corners of the country, can overcome the
Chávez machine.

"No amount of time on television can beat this," he told The Miami
Herald after his security detail yanked him out of another crowd. "This
country loves direct contact. It loves to be visited."

The exertion seems to be paying off. While most polls give the president
a comfortable lead, the race appears to be tightening. The Capriles camp
has been particularly energized by an August poll from Consultores 21, a
respected firm with a long track record, that gives him 48 percent of
the vote, a 2-point advantage over Chávez.

The polling firm's Vice President Saúl Cabrera said Capriles' talk of
political reconciliation and his refusal to be baited by Chávez's
increasingly vicious provocations (the president regularly calls him a
majunche jalabolas, which roughly translates to mediocre boot-licker)
seems to be paying off in polarized Venezuela.

"For the first time since 1998, I think the opposition has a real chance
of winning," Cabrera said.

During a recent three-day swing through northern Venezuela that took him
to three states and more than a dozen towns, staffers were caught
off-guard by the size, and enthusiasm, of the crowds. At one stop,
over-eager supporters ripped Capriles' shirt as they embraced him. At
another, a pack of screaming women left deep scratches on his arm and a
bite on his hand.

In the town of Cumaná, María Rodriguez, 43, sprinted behind Capriles in
the rain hoping to catch sight of him.

"We need a change in this country for our children and grandchildren,"
said Rodriguez, who has lost two brothers-in-law to violence. "I've
voted for Chávez for the last 10 years, but enough is enough."

Capriles has pledged to adopt Brazilian-style economic reforms that will
attract private investment even as he keeps Chávez's popular social
programs and raises the minimum wage. He gets some of his biggest
applause when he accuses the administration of giving away the nation's
oil wealth and "trying to save humanity" when it can't even keep the
lights on in parts of Venezuela. And while he hopes to encourage
Venezuelan exiles, many of whom live in south Florida, to return, he
warns those who left fleeing justice that they will have to pay for
their crimes. The messages have played well with his supporters and even
some disgruntled Chávistas.

But not everyone is under Capriles' spell. Just a few doors down from a
gymnasium in Quiriquire where Capriles was addressing a throng of
supporters, David Zapata, 53, a construction worker, was sitting on his
porch with his wife and children.

He said the last time that Chávez visited this town in Monagas state was
in 2005 when he laid the first brick of the Cerro Azul cement plant that
is being built with help from Iran. Seven years later, the factory is
still not functioning, and Zapata said he's been disappointed by the
administration's string of broken promises. But he doesn't hold Chávez
personally responsible.

"Chávez is the only one who has ever really cared about the poor," he
said, as he used a Capriles T-shirt as a sweat rag. "His mayors and
governors and the people who surround him are worthless but I am
definitely voting for him."

Despite the administration's problems, the plain-talking and charismatic
comandante still commands fierce allegiance, analysts said, and some
polls give him approval ratings of near 70 percent. Chávez is counting
on that loyalty — and his party's get-out-the-vote apparatus — to win a
third term.

During a rally Sunday in Capriles' home state of Miranda, Chávez called
on his lieutenants to smash the opposition and warned that a Capriles'
victory would plunge the country into an economic crisis, and perhaps
even a civil war.

Capriles' "campaign is one of deceit. He's the candidate of darkness and
fraud," Chávez told the crowd. "We're going to teach Venezuela's
bourgeoisie and that majunche a lesson."

As he ate a chicken breast off the end of a plastic fork, Capriles said
the presidents' insults only alienate voters. And he said that many
people who claim to be Chávez supporters simply tow the party line for
fear of losing government benefits or jobs.

"There are many people who are waiting for the eighth of October to take
off their red shirts," he said. "They're tired of the politicking, the
pressure, the fear and the blackmail."

But there's no denying Chávez's home-court advantage, said Roberto Abdul
with Sumate, an election watchdog group. He said Chávez has mixed state
and party business so thoroughly that they were virtually
indistinguishable. Public employees are often required to attend
campaign rallies and government projects are inaugurated on national TV
in what would pass for partisan stumping in other countries, he said.

"Measuring the problem is complicated because the abuse is so
exaggerated," Abdul said. "What we can say is that it's a campaign that
seems to have an unquantifiable amount of resources — they're
practically infinite."

At Chávez's campaign headquarters in Caracas, workers were busy painting
the portrait of Latin American Liberator Simon Bolivar on the wall.
Julio Velasquez is the head of the president's campaign in San Augustín,
a Caracas district where more than 36,000 votes are expected to be cast.

Velasquez rejected the notion that the campaign has a bottomless
war-chest. He said he's been holding raffles and distributing
lotto-style scratch cards to finance activities. In addition, some of
the 7 million registered voters of the ruling PSUV party donate a day's
wages every quarter.

"They [the opposition] say these things because they know they are going
to lose and they're setting the stage so that they won't recognize the
results," Velasquez said. "But we are planning for that. We are going to
take to the streets to defend the results."

After putting on a fresh shirt and steeling himself to plow into another
crowd, Capriles noted that the last time a president barnstormed the
country was in 1998. The candidate was a former military officer and
political neophyte named Hugo Chávez and the ruling elite mocked his
grassroots campaign — until he won.

"It's ironic because the same thing that happened to him is happening to
me," Capriles said. "When a president makes fun of the people, it's time
for a change."

http://www.miamiherald.com/2012/09/11/v-fullstory/2997290/capriles-closing-in-on-chavez.html