Recrimination was in the air as parties supporting President Hugo Chávez picked over the entrails of last Sunday's regional elections, in which the opposition gained control of the five most important states and the other 17 went to the ruling United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV).
Patria Para Todos (PPT), a minor partner in the governing coalition, claimed that the PSUV had taken too much advantage of its position and this had backfired. It was a new spin on PPT's long-running complaint that the PSUV is too prone to throwing its weight around at the expense of its smaller allies.
Andrea Tavares of PPT, who'd unsuccessfully run for mayor of the Libertador municipality in west Caracas, also complained that small parties had "suffered the consequences of the inexistence of regulation of the election campaign." This was a jibe at the National Electoral Council (CNE), which for by no means the first time was under question.
Critics demanded to know why the CNE had allowed some polling stations to stay open long after the official close. The rules only allow polling stations to remain open when people are still queuing to vote.
Unconfirmed reports claimed that busloads of people were delivered to polling stations long after the official close. The point about this was that people who were being bussed in had for obvious reasons not been waiting in line at the official close.
It was claimed that the people bussed were from the PSUV – from which there was no reaction to the allegations. For opposition activists, the implication was that the PSUV knew it was trailing at some voting centers and dragged out party members who were known not to have voted.
This in turn prompted memories of last December's referendum on a package of constitutional reforms proposed by Chávez. The key aim of this was to end a ban on more than one presidential re-election.
Chávez' plan was narrowly defeated. Afterwards, he railed against some of his supporters for not turning out to vote. At present, he's stuck with the prospect of having to stand down in 2012 – unless there's another referendum on changing the rules on presidential terms.
This, evidently, is playing on his mind. After the elections, he aired out loud the idea that "somebody" or "some organization" might want to call for another referendum on the issue. He can't do so himself, because he's had one crack at it and lost.
Back on the ranch, National Assembly Deputy Luis Tascón, a wayward Chávez loyalist who at times sounds and acts like the president's version of a turbulent priest, set the tone of the post-election inquest. Tascón blamed Diosdado Cabello, a big wheel in the PSUV and close associate of the president, for losing Miranda state, where he'd been governor until Sunday. Cabello was probably the biggest casualty of Sunday's vote. Tascón also took a tilt at ousted Tachíra governor Ronald Blanco La Cruz for losing that state to César Pérez, leader of the opposition Social Christian party, Copei.
The opposition was in party mood. Newly-elected Miranda State Governor Henrique Capriles Radonski was sworn in before a happy crowd, declaring that his administration was not going to defraud the people. Un Nuevo Tiempo, the party which did much to orchestrate the opposition's search for single unity candidates to take on the PSUV, released a long statement proclaiming that the election had produced "an indisputable triumph of those of us who represent the alternative for change."
As is all too often the case in Venezuela, election Sunday was marred by violence, although most of it apparently didn't have anything to do with politics. However, prosecutors said they were opening investigations into the deaths of two men who were shot dead in Guárico state and another who was killed in Anzoátegui state.
Officials stressed that there was not necessarily a political connotation to any of the murders. But elsewhere it was said that the two victims in Guárico were shot after coming out of a school that had been used as a polling station in San Juan de los Morros. They were said to have been members of the PSUV and to have been overseers during the vote.
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