Venezuelans go to the polls drowning in money and promises

No electorate in living memory can have been presented with such a tidal wave of promises, cajolings, appeals to sentiment, patriotism, family and class loyalties and outright financial bribery than the 20 million Venezuelans who go to the polls tomorrow.

The result will do much to set the stage for the future of this country and Latin America for years to come.

Many societies in the western hemisphere are nervously surveying the prospects for what is increasingly known as the region's "21st-century socialism" in Venezuela and other countries from Ecuador and Cuba to Uruguay.

Venezuelans go to the polls a month after their president Hugo Chávez died of cancer at the height of his popularity after more than 13 years of leadership.

His popularity was widely condemned by his many local and foreign enemies in a successful international campaign of defamation. This was despite expensively and spotlessly organised elections, the validity of which was praised by the EU and the US-based Carter Centre.

No appetite for coup
There is no sign that the Venezuelans have any appetite for another run of the failed coup of 2002, which with strong western backing toppled Chávez and sent him to an island in the Caribbean for almost two days.

This was all for the benefit of a right-wing businessman who had virtually no domestic support and no idea how unpopular his ideas would be after he dismissed the congress and the judges.

Chávez’s baton is being carried by Nicolás Maduro, an experienced bus driver with left-wing views who was the late comandante’s chosen successor and briefly his vice-president. He has been driving himself in his own bus to his rallies.

Though Maduro performed well in a recent public encounter with former US secretary of state Hillary Clinton when he rejected her criticisms of his country by reminding her of the unresolved lawlessness at the US prison centre in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, he could not claim to have Chávez’s command of language or charisma. Nevertheless, polls show he has something of a lead.

Rival
Maduro faces Henrique Capriles, a member of the Venezuelan oligarchy who excoriates Chávez and is seeking forgiveness for the exiled coup plotters of 2002.

Ridiculing Capriles’s pretensions to ordinariness, Maduro has been challenging him to produce any bus ticket he has ever bought.

In recent days both candidates have resorted to making bigger and bigger promises to voters.

Capriles has suggested a 40 per cent rise in civil service wages, while his opponent has put forward a rise of between 30 per cent and 40 per cent.

Such a move could bring chaos to a country that is already wrestling with inflation.

Venezuela is swimming – some would say drowning – in a tidal wave of hard currency as the price of a barrel of crude oil has topped $103. Indeed, the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries has said Venezuela has more crude oil than Saudi Arabia.

Currency devalued
Yet the rate of spending has forced the government to devalue Venezuela's currency, the bolívar, twice in recent months.

The state oil company has shown no signs of collapsing under the lash of increased demands for cash from the government as it seeks to meet the expectations of voters in two electoral campaigns in six months.

In its search for cash, Venezuela has sought large sums of money from China.

Nevertheless, it remains true that it is difficult to bring down a country that has more crude oil than any other, and that has billions of dollars of reserves.

The prophets of gloom who for years have written off a state oil company have been confounded.

Popular strategy
Moreover, there is no sign yet that most Venezuelans want a reversal of Chávez's strategy of providing food, education and health for all.

The inhabitants of the slums that still surround many cities here are unlikely to foreswear the housing scheme that promised 200,000 new dwellings last year, delivered 200,080 and has plans for another 380,000 this year, the large majority built by the state.

A regular poll of political attitudes in Venezuela shows voters are content with their democracy.

Though Maduro lacks many of the qualities of Chávez, who embodied a social-democratic revolution, the bus driver will be a hard man to beat tomorrow.