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April 12th, 2013 
Peter Nolan
“I am the son of Chavez,” said Mr Maduro, with a pair of parakeets
on his shoulder just in case anyone had missed the point. “I am ready
to be your president.”
Opinions polls suggest that the residual sentiment from Chavez’s death, and
the huge advantages that Chavez built into the system during his years in
power, controlling the media and some four million government jobs, will be
enough to carry Mr Maduro to victory.
The question, however, is by what margin? The most recent polls appear to show
that the legacy lead Mr Maduro inherited from Chavez – who won the
presidency in October by some two million votes, 11 per cent of the total –
is starting to narrow sharply.
The possibility that Mr Maduro, the former foreign minister, might win with a
far smaller margin – perhaps less than one million votes – has already led
to widespread speculation that he might soon face difficulties from within
the all-important army faction that supported Chavez, a former tank
commander.
With the army making up a quarter of Venezuela’s executive cabinet and
military men occupying half of the nation’s 23 state governorships, Mr
Maduro will have to work hard to control an increasingly powerful group,
according to Citizen Control, a Venezuelan think tank that follows military
issues.
While the Chavistas were winding up their campaign in Caracas, Henrique
Capriles, the 41-year-old opposition leader, held his own huge rallies in
the western states of Apure and Lara, promising change and an end to the
sclerotic, crony-socialism that characterised the Chavez era.
Despite its oil riches, Venezuela has a per capita murder rate nearly twice
that of Mexico, 23 per cent inflation that has forced a painful currency
devaluation, failing infrastructure that sees widespread blackouts outside
Caracas and food shortages.
The opposition has no shortage of ammunition to fire at the Chavista
government.
“Those who govern today have never done anything for your security.
Sunday we’re going to choose between life and death,” Mr Capriles
roared at a rally in the city of Barquisimeto, in Lara state. “If you
want a future, you have to vote for change, for a different government.”
Last October, Chavez used both the captive machinery of government to get out
the vote and largely smothered Mr Capriles with his charisma.
This election has been a much scrappier affair. Mr Capriles has dared to
attack the record of Chavismo – if not Chavez himself – and Mr Maduro has
been forced to defend himself, calling his opponent a member of the “petit
bourgeois”, to which Mr Capriles retorted that Mr Maduro – a heavy set
man with a ponderous moustache – was a “bull-chicken”.
Tomorrow’s winner faces a mounting list of problems as Venezuela’s economy,
now 95 per cent reliant on oil exports, deteriorates rapidly, with one
internal estimate warning that inflation could hit 30 to 50 per cent within
six months.
The charismatic Chavez was able to sweep along the adoring crowds with
promises of socialist revolution, even when the evidence suggested
otherwise. Unfortunately for the dour Mr Maduro, that is not an option, and
there are increasing signs that he cannot live on the memory of Chavez
forever. “Lights! Lights! Lights!” chanted one angry crowd at Mr
Maduro during the campaign, forcing the state TV to mute its
crowd-monitoring microphone and cover his embarrassment.
“The real problem is that this guy is not coated in Teflon,” says
Pedro Burelli, a former board member of Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA. “Already
you can see how fast attitudes are changing. Maduro can win because he
started too far ahead on the sentiment vote, but if he wins by a
single-digit margin, then anything can happen.”
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