Chavez faces toughest vote in 14 years Sunday

Thursday was not a good day to try to get any public business done in Venezuela’s capital. State employees quit their offices by the tens of thousands, joining the red-shirted throngs that filled Caracas’s center for the final pre-election rally for President Hugo Chavez. Chavez’s opponent in tomorrow’s election, Henrique Capriles, and his supporters accused the government of handing out red shirts to public employees and compelling them to participate. People converged on Caracas by bus from all corners of Venezuela for Thursday’s street party. People barbecued on sidewalks, danced to music played on various stages and downed beer before a deluge drenched everyone, including Chavez. The crowd numbered several hundred thousand, topping the turnout the previous Sunday for Capriles’ final rally in Caracas. One Chavez supporter said he arrived for Thursday’s event on a bus from Maracaibo chartered by that city’s pro-Chavez mayor. Luis Eduardo Bolivar said he was grateful to Chavez for giving him a house, a wheelchair for one of his relatives and his pension. President Chavez faces the toughest election of his 14-year rule tomorrow in a vote pitting his charisma and oil-financed largesse against fresh-faced challenger Henrique Capriles’ promise of jobs, safer streets and an end to cronyism. Chavez, 58, staged a remarkable comeback from cancer this year and wants a new six-year term to consolidate his self-styled socialist revolution in the OPEC nation. Capriles, a boyish 40-year-old state governor, has run a marathon eight-month campaign of house-by-house visits that have galvanized the historically fractured opposition and set up its best shot at the presidency since Chavez’s election in 1998. Defeat for Chavez would defenestrate Latin America’s leader of anti-US sentiment while potentially boosting oil companies’ access to the world’s largest crude reserves. Victory would allow Chavez to continue a wave of nationalizations and consolidate control over the economy, though a recurrence of his cancer would weaken his leadership and possibly give the opposition another chance. In torrential rain, red-shirted supporters of the president filled much of downtown Caracas on Thursday for his final rally. “Chavez will not fail the Venezuelan people,” the president said, soaked to the skin in a dark raincoat, on a stage before a sea of fans. “You know that my loyalty to the people almost brought me to the point of death. This is my path.” For nearly a decade, he has won over voters with free health clinics, subsidized groceries and new universities. Over the last year he launched programs to give pensions to the elderly, stipends to poor mothers, and tens of thousands of new homes were handed over on live TV to tearful supporters. Everywhere Chavez has gone on the campaign trail, supplicants have shouted to him asking for help getting a home or a job, or thrust hand-written letters at his staff. “I work for the state and I’m offended that the loser (Capriles) says we’re made to attend and made to wear red!” said Paulo Garralaga, at Thursday’s giant rally in Caracas. “I came to support Chavez and to tell him I’m going to vote for him.” Yet, nationalizations have weakened private enterprise and given party apparatchiks growing control over jobs. Weak law enforcement, dysfunctional courts and plentiful arms have made Venezuela more violent than some war-zones. Frequent blackouts are an annoying reminder of squandered oil income. “Each one of you should make a list of the problems that you have, and ask yourself, how many of those problems has this famous revolution solved for you?” the wiry and sports-loving Capriles intoned at one of his final rallies. Arab news