The two rivals for the Venezuelan presidency have pulled out all the stops ahead of Sunday’s polls, making their final bids to succeed President Hugo Chavez. The country’s voting authority has promised a fair election, despite allegations of fraud.
Acting President Nicolas Maduro and rival Henrique Capriles
closed their campaigns amid massive presidential rallies.
Venezuelans will head to polls on Sunday morning to decide whether
to stick with Chavez-style socialism, or to move towards a more
westernized model of government.
Though former bus driver Maduro maintains a lead in polls, Capriles
has been closing the gap during the final days of the campaign.
Capriles hosted massive rallies in the western states of Lara and
Apure, while Maduro campaigned in Caracas, styling himself as a
humble servant of Chavez’s legacy. He appeared in front of ecstatic
followers with two live parakeets on his shoulders – birds have
become a symbol of his campaign since his claim that Chavez
appeared to him in the form of a bird to bless his candidacy.
Local company Datanalisis published a report saying that around 55
percent of Venezuelans supported Maduro, compared to 45 percent who
favor Capriles’ candidacy.
The campaign has been dogged by mudslinging from both candidates,
who have leveled accusations of fraud at each other. The latest
flurry of allegations came on Friday when the Venezuelan government
claimed it had captured Colombian militants supposedly charged by
the opposition to disrupt elections on Sunday.
"We've managed to dismantle a plan that would try to influence
the election or the post-election period," Vice President Jorge
Arreaza said on Venezuelan national television.
Maduro has criticized his opponent throughout the short campaign,
branding him as a capricious 'Prince of the Bourgeoisie' who
intends to sell out Venezuelan interests to Washington. Capriles,
on the other hand, has slammed Maduro for capitalizing on the death
of former President Hugo Chavez to drum up support.
Meanwhile, Venezuela’s National Electoral Committee declared that
Sunday’s polls would be free of Fraud.
“The results that we give at the National Electoral Committee
are indicative of the will of the electorate,” Tibisay Lucena,
President of the Electoral Committee said in a statement. “We
are a peaceful people with a strong democratic tradition. Our
differences will be resolved in the elections.”
Skin deep
Author and international consultant Adrian Salbuchi told RT that
Maduro has little or no personal power base, and is surfing a wave
of post-Chavez socialism. He cited one of Maduro’s main problems as
not having the same charisma and popularity as his predecessor.
“If Capriles wins there will be a complete realignment in favor of
the US,” Salbuchi told RT, adding that a win for Maduro could
trigger a US-driven 'Latin American Spring.'
“But either way the prospects are not good for Venezuela,”
he concluded, underlining that Chavez’s foreign policy had been one
of the crown jewels of Latin American politics over the past
decade.
The question is, whether Maduro will be as good in uniting people as Chavez if he wins the election, assistant professor from Drexel University George Ciccariello-Maher told RT.
“Certainly Maduro is as well prepared as anyone to continue this revolution and to push it forward. The task is really going to be - can he unify this Chavez block, can he join everyone together? Chavez was a master at doing this, to take the left and the center and join them, and to maintain this union if it was necessary. The question is going to be is Nicolas Maduro capable of doing this?” he said.
Close Call
The upcoming presidential race will result in a “tied
election”, but ultimately but ultimately Nicolas Maduro will
win, believes Gregory Wilpert, co-founder of venezuelaanalysis.com.
He told RT that the main reason for this is that Maduro has the
Chavez’s legacy to fall back on.
“He is riding the wave of sympathy in the wake of President
Chavez’s death and numerous polls have shown that Venezuelans in
general believe that Bolivarian Revolution, as Chavez’s project was
known, has been good for Venezuela,” Wilpert explained.
Maduro “has basically taken up Chavez’s program from the
re-election campaign last October” that is why Wilpert argues
people would ultimately chose him as “ he is a loyal
follower of Chavez, and there is no reason to believe that that he
would do anything differently.”
Maduro will place “less emphasis on foreign policy than
Chavez,” Wilpert believes, because he will need to focus a lot
more on domestic issues, such as tackling crime in the country.
“The success of his presidency will involve whether he can sort
the crime problem.”