VENEZUELA:President Hugo Chávez appeared on course last night to win Venezuela's election, according to exit polls which if confirmed will give him another six-year term to taunt Washington and promote Latin America's radical left, writes Rory Carrollin Caracas
Early indications suggested the poverty-stricken barrios turned out in force yesterday to vote for an incumbent who has used oil revenues to fund clinics, schools and food subsidies at home and to project his influence abroad.
Voters stood at polling stations from 2am to beat the queues which had formed by dawn, a reflection of the passions aroused by a peaceful but bitter election campaign.
Mr Chavez (52) said that if he won, his vaguely defined "socialist revolution" would accelerate and that he might hold a referendum to abolish term limits, a hint that he wanted to stay on until 2021. A preliminary poll from the US polling firm Evans/McDonough indicated a wide lead for Mr Chavez. Company president Alex Evans said: "What we are getting is very similar to our last opinion poll which had Chavez on 57 per cent."
The main opposition candidate, Manuel Rosales, seemed to be trailing at around 38 per cent, a wide gap but still a tribute to the veteran politician's success in galvanising an opposition which until recently was so split it considered boycotting the election.
The opposition billed the vote as a last chance to stop a fledgling dictator who was hoarding power and incrementally introducing Cuban-style communism into the world's fifth-biggest oil exporter.
The president's supporters, known as Chavistas, rejected the accusation as sour grapes from an elite unable to accept the will of a poor majority marginalised until his first election victory in 1998.
An oil-fuelled boom has prompted a government spending spree on social projects and infrastructure. Some critics say it is old-fashioned patronage and populism masked in revolutionary rhetoric.
Polling stations basking in tropical sunshine illustrated the deep divisions. In Petare, a slum of tin-roofed, crumbling homes etched into hills overlooking the capital, Caracas, the mood was festive. Summoned by Chavistas' bugles playing reveille, people started queuing outside the Cecilio Acosta school shortly after midnight. Vendors sold coffee and soft drinks while speakers blasted out music.
In the queue were Eukaris Gonzalez (18) and her mother Arceli (41). "We voted for the president because he cares about the people," said the teenager. But in middle-class Altamira the mood was anxious. "I'm tired of Chávez and I don't think he has respect for democracy," said Darwin Rodriguez (27).
Victory for Mr Chávez would dismay the Bush administration which has had toxic relations since a failed coup against him in 2002.