Venezuela's opposition has been energized by Sunday's regional elections, in which its candidates won five states and important urban centers in the country's most economically vital and populous regions. Opposition leaders on Monday characterized the victories as a product of the frustrations urban Venezuelans feel with mounting crime and other social ills. "I'm convinced that people manifested the desire for change across Venezuela," said Leopoldo López, an opposition politician who campaigned for Antonio Ledezma, elected mayor of greater Caracas.
The government of President Hugo Chavez stressed that most voters supported the president's United Socialist Party in balloting for 22 governorships and more than 320 mayoral posts. The president's allies won 17 states, including Barinas, where Chavez grew up and where one of his brothers, Adan, faced a stiff challenge. Government candidates also turned back dissident politicians who had broken with Chavez.
"Without a doubt, we are on the right path," Adan Chavez said on state television Monday night.
But leading Chavez associates, some from the most radical fringe of the president's movement, lost key races here in the bustling capital and elsewhere as the opposition increased the number of states it controls from two to five. About 40 percent of Venezuela's population lives in the electoral corridor the opposition now controls.
The government candidates who went down in defeat include two longtime Chavez allies, Diosdado Cabello, the incumbent governor here in Miranda state, and Aristóbulo Istúriz, who was running for the mayor's post in greater Caracas. Mario Silva, a television talk show host who specializes in deriding opposition leaders, lost in the industrial state of Carabobo.
The president had vigorously campaigned for his candidates, because an overwhelming victory would have given him more political leverage to reform the constitution and run for office when his term ends in 2013.