For a decade, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has been the poster boy of Left-wing politics. His views may be unpalatable to many - "How we have missed the Soviet Union!" Chávez likes to say - but his socialist revolution has inspired like-minded politicians across the globe. He has also cleverly courted the mainstream through measures such as a $1 million donation to the Nelson Mandela Foundation. The model Naomi Campbell called him her "rebel angel".
The Chávez effect may, finally, be wearing off. In regional elections on Sunday, the "people's president" seems certain to find that his revolution is not as in vogue as it once was. He is expected lose control of the country's three most vital areas: the capital Caracas, oil-rich Zulia and industrial heartland Carabobo. His daily rallies are still televised across half a dozen state-run channels, but they are not as popular as they seem.
The thousands of poverty stricken ''supporters" have allegedly been bribed with alcohol and cash to don the revolution's red shirts and listen to their president harangue what he claims are the thieving wealthy who want to oppress the masses. That message is ringing increasingly hollow, for both rich and poor.
The area around the Caracas Country Club used to sit on thick foundations of old money, but no longer. These days many of the old members cannot afford their subscriptions. The club no longer tries to shame them into doing so, as it once did, by pinning their names up on public display - there are simply too many defaulters.
Meanwhile the Chavistas, as the president's fans are known, buy so many Hummers that the vehicles have their own assembly plant in Venezuela. Petro-money has seen sales of Rolexes rise sevenfold and clubs like Sawu, where the new elite pour Johnnie Walker Blue - that elixir of the ultra rich - into their Coca-Colas, flourish.
The fact that the institutions of privilege have merely changed hands increasingly angers ordinary people who were promised everything and have been given very little. The apparent Chávez cronyism that is the target of mounting popular resentment has been exemplified by "Suitcasegate", the illicit delivery of $800,000 in a suitcase to the campaign of the new President of Argentina, Cristina de Kirchner, allegedly on behalf of Chávez. Carlos Kauffmann, a businessman on trial in the affair, is said to have earned over $300 million in the past five years, and has one of the smartest houses in the Country Club.
Chávez has long railed against the Venezuelan ''oligarchy", clans he claims used to rule the country and control its wealth. But among the poor, incidents such as "Suitcasegate" are prompting accusations that the Chavistas have become an oligarchy themselves.
Faced with crucial poll defeats, Chávez is showing the strain. As the elections near, he is lashing out in a manner more commonly associated with the continent's Right-wing dictators. Not content with disqualifying and threatening to imprison the most promising opposition candidates, he has warned he might send the troops into regions that don't back him at the polls. When Chávez's former defence minister, Raúl Isaías Baduel, started campaigning against him, he was bundled into an unmarked car, in front of his screaming wife and children.
Last year, Chávez revoked the licence of Venezuela's oldest and most popular television station, RCTV. The Soviet-style station that has replaced it has ratings of just 3 per cent. He has also deployed armed militias, who are encouraged to spy on their neighbours and defend Chávez's "revolution" by force, if necessary. Yet the scaremongering cannot mask reality. The poor face shortages of staples such as milk, rice, beans and corn flour, and headlines warn of 51 per cent inflation. Meanwhile, their president sends millions overseas to help like-minded socialist regimes in Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Cuba. Workers are now protesting: "How come he has money for them and not for us?"
Chávez's situation gets grimmer by the day. The price of oil has crashed well below that projected for the 2009 budget. Far from helping foreign friends, Venezuela will struggle to keep itself afloat. But more is at stake for Latin America on Sunday than Chavez's largesse. For the elections are also a vote of confidence in a decade-long movement across the region: Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. Their success has been built on Chávez's personality; as that loses its force, so does the movement.
To cap it all, Chávez is facing the wrath of his ex-wife. Former television anchor Marisabel Rodriguez, 43, now one of Chávez's fiercest and most effective critics, is opposition candidate for mayor in her home city of Barquisimeto. "From the Chávez of today you should know the (Chávez) of before. He doesn't have much in common with that of 1997," she said. "If he is not a dictator, at least he seems it."
Ever more Venezuelans agree with her.
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