Venezuelans will elect Hugo Chavez’s successor Sunday in a duel between the heir of the late leader’s socialist revolution, Nicolas Maduro, and an opposition vowing change in the nation.
Venezuelans will elect Hugo Chavez's successor Sunday in a duel between the heir of the late leader's socialist revolution, Nicolas Maduro, and an opposition vowing change in the nation.
One month after Chavez died, his leftist legacy goes on the line after a bitter race between Maduro, the acting president who casts himself as the late leader's "son," and opposition leader Henrique Capriles.
Maduro led opinion polls as he promised to continue the oil-funded policies that cut poverty from 50 to 29 percent through popular health, education and food programs.
But Capriles hopes that discontent over the nation's soaring murder rate, chronic food shortages, high inflation and regular power outages will give him an upset victory after 14 years under Chavez.
Maduro has Chavez's well-organized electoral machine behind him, with supporters expected to wake up voters before dawn by playing military-style bugles across the Andean nation. Polls open at 10:30 GMT and close at 22:30 GMT.
Chavez named Maduro as his political heir in December before undergoing a final round of cancer surgery. He died on March 5 aged 58.
"You know that comandante Chavez gave me a difficult job and I accepted it like a son. I feel at peace," Maduro, 50, said during a ceremony late Saturday at an old military barracks where the former colonel was laid to rest.
During the campaign, Capriles stepped lightly around Chavez's legacy, pledging to maintain his social "missions." He lost to Chavez by 11 points in the October 7 presidential election -- the opposition's best score against him.
Maduro and Capriles engaged in an acrimonious campaign marked by insults, government allegations of assassination plots against the acting leader and the transformation of Chavez into a saintly figure.
Opinion polls gave Maduro leads ranging between 10 and 20 points, though the last survey conducted by Datanalisis last week gave him a narrower, 9.7-point edge.
