Presidential candidates Nicolas Maduro and Henrique Capriles have begun Venezuela’s election race with scathing personal attacks even as mourners still file past Hugo Chavez’s coffin.
Maduro, who was sworn in as acting president after Chavez died of cancer last week, is seen as favourite to win the April 14 election, bolstered by an oil-financed state apparatus and a wave of public sympathy over Chavez’s death.
“I am not Chavez, but I am his son,” Maduro told thousands of cheering, red-clad supporters as he formally presented his candidacy to the election board yesterday. “I am you, a worker. You and I are Chavez, workers and soldiers of the fatherland,” the former bus driver and union activist added after the crowd’s emotions were whipped up by recordings of Chavez singing the national anthem.
Chavez made clear before his fourth and last cancer operation in December that he wanted Maduro to be his Socialist Party’s candidate to succeed him if he died.
Maduro has vowed to continue the radical policies of Chavez’s 14-year rule in the South American Opec nation, including the popular use of vast oil revenues for social programs. But Capriles is promising a tough fight. “Nicolas, I’m not going to give you a free passage ... you are not Chavez,” Capriles said in a combative speech late on Sunday. He also accused Maduro of lying to minimise Chavez’s medical condition while he prepared his candidacy.
“Nicolas lied to this country for months,” Capriles said. “You are exploiting someone who is no longer here because you have nothing else to offer the country ... I don’t play with death, I don’t play with suffering, like that.”
At stake in the election is not only the future of Chavez’s leftist “revolution”, but the continuation of Venezuelan oil subsidies and other aid crucial to the economies of left-wing allies around Latin America, from Cuba to Bolivia.
Venezuela boasts the world’s largest oil reserves.
Government officials said Capriles was playing with fire, offending Chavez’s family and risking legal action by criticising the handling of his illness and death.