TECHNICAL glitches, heckling from his own supporters, thinning crowds and bad polling news. With just over six weeks to go before Venezuela’s presidential election, Hugo Chávez’s bid for another six years in office no longer looks quite the push-over it once seemed.
A self-proclaimed radical socialist who led a failed coup attempt in 1992, Mr Chávez has been almost unbeatable at the polls since he first opted for the electoral route to power in the late 1990s. The biggest cloud over his re-election bid at the outset was his health: after undergoing three operations in under a year for an unspecified abdominal cancer, the president looked to be in urgent need of a successor.
But as the 58-year-old has gradually become more mobile—even singing and dancing at some events—his physical survival has receded as a campaign topic. The question today is whether his famous charisma, a wallet stuffed with petro-dollars and an iron grip on the institutions of state will overcome broad discontent with his government and an energetic campaign by Henrique Capriles of the opposition Democratic Unity coalition (MUD).
Much of Mr Chávez’s campaigning has been done on television and radio. He has frequently violated electoral law by making partisan political comments during presidential addresses that all broadcast media are obliged to carry. In the few events he has held in person, he has seemed out of touch with his own supporters. In Carabobo state, in early August, he was heckled for imposing an unpopular candidate for governor on his United Socialist party.
The low point came on August 20th, when the president was forced to cut short a nationwide broadcast from the Caruachi hydro-electric plant in Bolívar, a state that has been a bastion of chavista sentiment. First, his handpicked audience of workers from state-owned heavy industries demanded the restoration of their collective-bargaining rights. Mr Chávez was forced to climb down and grant their demand live on-air. Then Mr Chávez’s microphone failed, and a back-up sound-system began transmitting shouts of “justice!”—possibly from dissident workers who had managed to breach the security cordon.
Although not officially a campaign event, the aborted meeting gave a hint of the anger felt by many trade unionists over the collapse of the iron and steel, coal, aluminium and electricity industries under government control. The official explanation for the suspension of the transmission was a power failure. Considering that the venue was a hydro-electric plant, that scarcely served to put minds at rest.
While Mr Chávez promises the “construction of socialism”, “preserving life on the planet” and “saving the human race”, Mr Capriles, a centrist former state governor, has focused on bread-and-butter issues like crime, unemployment, blackouts and inflation. He promises to create 3m jobs, build a thousand new schools and double production of crude oil. Mr Capriles is aiming these messages most of all at the president’s power base among the poor and public employees—particularly in small, often remote, towns where the opposition has traditionally been weak.
Even polls by pro-government organisations show the challenger’s support growing, while Mr Chávez’s has remained stable. Although the majority of polls continue to give the president a double-digit lead, two recent surveys have put them neck-and-neck. A poll by Varianzas, carried out during the first half of August, found that 49.3% of respondents planned to vote for the president and 47.2% for the challenger. Another pollster, Consultores 21, puts Mr Capriles ahead, with 47.7% to Mr Chávez’s 45.9%.
Whatever the true figures may be, it seems indisputable that the Chávez juggernaut is stationary, whereas the opposition is gradually making headway. The result on October 7th is likely to be a lot closer than previously expected.