Friday, December 1, 2006

by Patrick Moser

CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP): Three days before a presidential election, Venezuela's firebrand President Hugo Chavez on Thursday urged the opposition to recognize his triumph once results are in and reported alleged plots to destabilise the country.

“We will win, and I urge the country to accept this," said Chavez, 52, whose eight years in office have been marked by opposition attempts to drive him from power and confrontation with the US administration.

"Let my opponents accept their defeat," he said at a news conference, adding however that this could wait until the results of Sunday's presidential election are in.

Flush with petrodollars, Chavez is riding a wave of popularity among millions of impoverished Venezuelans and leads voter intention polls with an advantage of as many as 30 points over Zulia Governor Manuel Rosales, who dismissed the surveys and insisted he was headed to victory.

A former paratrooper who once led a failed coup, Chavez claimed "irresponsible, putschist, fascist" elements were plotting to plunge the South American country into chaos in a last-minute minute bid to shock Venezuelans into changing their votes.

He said his intelligence service foiled a plot to assassinate Rosales and blame the attack on him, saying a high-power rifle with telescopic sight was found inside a car near the site where the governor held a campaign rally.

Authorities also uncovered an attempt to attack a commuter train in Caracas, Chavez said.

He pointed out that some "rational members of the opposition" had expressed concern with the alleged plots.

Chavez said Sunday's election marked a choice between his peaceful revolution that would bring in "socialism for the 21st century" and a government run "by the US Empire and its lackeys."

Rosales claims to represent a social-democratic alternative to the current government's "warlike political ideology," which he says is driving the country to the dogs.

Rosales, 53, who temporarily stepped down as governor of the oil-rich Zulia state to run for president, represents a once fractious opposition now united by its determination to defeat Chavez.

He insisted his support was rapidly growing "and we will win the election."

But he has had a tough time competing with the flamboyant president's charisma and his popularity among impoverished Venezuelans, who make up about half the 26 million population.

Chavez also is buoyed by high oil prices that have been key in financing ambitious health care, education and housing in slums and impoverished rural areas, with the help of communist Cuba, which receives cheap oil in return.

The programmes are so popular that even Rosales has said he would maintain them if he is elected.

But the opposition candidate insists Chavez is wasting the resources and vowed that if elected, he would use 20 percent of the oil income to distribute cash subsidies to the countries neediest.

While Venezuela exports half its oil output of about three million barrels a day to the United States, Chavez cultivates an image as a revolutionary leader not afraid to stand up to the US administration.

A former paratrooper who loves baseball and hates George W. Bush, Chavez said on Thursday that when he called the US president a "devil" before the UN General Assembly in September, he was talking straight from the heart.

"Somebody had to tell the devil that he's a devil," he said, adding with a grin: "I don't know why they were offended," he said.

Sunday's voting caps a busy electoral year in Latin America that brought several leftist leaders to office, in what Chavez said would be a boost to his plans for regional economic integration.

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