CARACAS, Aug. 25, (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and his opponents launched campaigns on Wednesday for legislative elections that test the socialist's support after a year of recession and will give his critics a louder voice.
Buoyant Chavez supporters organized parties and fireworks around Caracas after midnight to kick off a race dominated by criticism of the government’s record on tackling Venezuela’s appalling murder rate.
"Let’s go to battle!" Chavez’s campaign chief Aristobulo Isturiz bellowed at one raucous nocturnal rally.
Struggling opposition parties are all but guaranteed gains in the Sept. 26 vote after they boycotted the last election for lawmakers five years ago, leaving parliament in the major U.S. oil supplier entirely in the hands of the president’s allies.
The elections — a barometer of backing for Chavez’s policies ahead of a presidential vote in two years — are also a chance for opponents to take back a little of the power he has accumulated over more than 11 years in office in the OPEC nation.
Despite sky-high crime and economic woes, the ex-soldier who has polarized Venezuela between supporters of his pro-poor policies and those who call him a dictator remains Venezuela’s most popular politician.
Opposition parties have fielded unity candidates to increase their chances of denting Chavez’s grip on parliament.
They hope to capitalize on his relative weakness after months fighting crises such as electricity cuts and a scandal over rotting food that dragged his ratings below 50 percent.
"This is his worst moment in 11 years," anti-Chavez newspaper editor Teodoro Petkoff said. "But his emotional link with a large sector of the nation remains very powerful."
Most analysts expect Chavez’s socialist party to hold a reduced majority in the parliament, helped by changes to electoral districts that critics call gerrymandering.
There is a slim chance the opposition will win the most seats, which would create headaches for Chavez and cause political instability.
Their goal is to win at least a third of seats in the legislature, which would limit the ability of Chavez’s socialist party to change major legislation.
CRIME AGENDA
Usually an expert at setting the political agenda, especially ahead of elections, Chavez seems to have been caught off balance by a campaign from opposition media to highlight the government’s failure to tackle violent crime.
Venezuela has one of the world’s highest murder rates with between 13,000 and 16,000 people killed last year according to leaked police numbers and a non-governmental watchdog, respectively. Already-high murder figures have soared since Chavez took office.
Last week a court ordered two newspapers to desist from publishing violent pictures after they printed a gory archive photo of bodies piled up in a morgue.
The government, which also responded angrily to a New York Times story comparing Venezuela violence to Iraq, says it is working hard to bring down crime and that a new national police force has slashed homicide rates in a Caracas pilot project.
A handful of lawmakers who defected from Chavez’s ranks in 2007 are the opposition’s only presence in the current national assembly parliament, which has given Chavez a legislative carte blanche since 2005.
He has used that power to start remolding one of the continent’s most Americanized nations as a socialist society, while expanding his sway over courts and other institutions.
Critics say the 56-year-old ally of Cuba is following his mentor Fidel Castro and installing an autocratic communist dictatorship in the baseball-mad nation studded with fast food restaurants and shopping malls.
Chavez, who has lost just one of over a dozen elections since 1998, says he is a democrat committed to freeing Venezuela from U.S. "imperialism" and local oligarchs.
