Narrow win for Maduro

Capriles demands recount of Venezuelan votes

LATE socialist leader Hugo Chavez’s chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro, won Venezuela’s presidential election by a whisker but now faces opposition protests plus a host of economic and political challenges in the Opec nation.

The 50-year-old former bus driver, whom Chavez named as his preferred heir before dying from cancer, edged out opposition challenger Henrique Capriles with 50.7% of the vote in Sunday’s election.

Capriles took 49.1%, just 235 000 fewer ballots.

Capriles, whose strong showing confounded most forecasts, refused to recognise the result and said his team had a list of more than 3 000 irregularities ranging from gunshots to the illegal reopening of polling centres.

“I didn’t fight against a candidate today, but against the abuse of power,” said Capriles, the 40-year-old governor of Miranda state. He is demanding a recount.

A protracted election dispute could cause instability in a deeply polarised nation with the world’s largest oil reserves.

Maduro said he would accept a full recount. He insisted his victory was “clean”.

The election board said Maduro’s win was “irreversible” and gave no indication of when it might carry out an audit. Critics say four of its five members are openly pro-government.

Maduro’s slim victory provides an inauspicious start for the “Chavismo” movement’s transition to a post- Chavez era, and raises the possibility that he could face challenges from rivals within the disparate leftist coalition.

Chavez beat Capriles by 11 percentage points and 1.6 million votes in October, showing how quickly the gap between the two sides has eroded without the larger-than-life presence of the former leader.

The sympathy effect for Maduro from Chavez’s death was clearly wearing off. And Capriles’s message on the campaign – slamming his rival as an incompetent and poor copy of Chavez – had hit home.

“The death of Chavez was a game changer that is leading to the gradual reorganisation of political power in Venezuela, in which the armed forces will play a key role behind the scenes,” Venezuelan political analyst Diego Moya-Ocampos said. – Reuters