Opinion

Hope to oust el loco

There’s a real chance Hugo “El Loco” Chavez will lose this Sunday’s election in Venezuela. Is President Obama ready to act to protect democracy if Chavez tries to hold onto power anyway?

Venezuela’s jails and graveyards teem with those who have tried to challenge Chavez’s power during his 14 years as president. But a slim-figured, 40-year-old state governor, Henrique Capriles, at long last poses a real threat.

It could mean an end to the anti-US crusade that’s so central to Chavez’s “Bolivarian revolution.” Venezuela would turn its back on Iran, Syria, North Korea and other rogue regimes that Chavez embraces simply for their anti-Americanism.

Venezuela would also stop being the sugar daddy for anti-Yanqui forces in our hemisphere (Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, etc.). And Brazil, Argentina and the other “neutral-but-lean-Chavez” regional powers would likely ease back toward normalcy without the Noam Chomsky-loving firebrand to egg them on.

Capriles, nicknamed El Flaco (The Skinny), is the governor of Venezuela’s Miranda state. If he wins, he says, he’d normalize relations with the United States and open his country’s economy to foreign businesses — yes, even to international corporations. He also promises to end Chavez’s clearly anti-democratic practices.

The country’s polls are notoriously unreliable, but some now show a close race. Others promise Chavez will win by a large margin — but that’s to be expected when Chavez’s government tightly controls the media and is so intimidating that voters fear telling even a pollster that they’re sick and tired of a constantly depressed economy (even though the country has the world’s largest oil reserves).

Who can blame them? Capriles’ rallies have drawn huge crowds, but last Sunday shots were fired at a rally in Barinas state, killing three people. Wouldn’t you be scared?

The killing was only the regime’s latest tactic. Earlier in the campaign, Chavez’s media lapdogs tried to whip up anti-Semitic feelings, accusing Capriles of being a “Zionist agent” because his maternal grandparents were Jewish (Holocaust survivors, in fact — but Capriles himself is a devout Catholic).

And for months Chavez spent tons of the country’s petro-wealth in impoverished neighborhoods, showering voters with free flat-screen TVs and other brand-new appliances. Yet Capriles remains popular.

Even if the challenger overcomes all of Chavez’s antics to eke out a victory on Sunday, it may not be over. Chavez might drive in thousand of Colombian supporters from across the border in the last hours, or stuff ballots with the votes of the deceased.

And a close election, regardless of the outcome, could easily lead to violence, which will prompt Chavez to impose martial law.

Regional observers like Jorge Castaneda, a former Mexican foreign minister, are therefore skeptical that a “Venezuelan Spring” is around the corner.

If Capriles wins by one or two points, Chavez can probably steal the election. But some experts think that if the theft is too blatant — say, of a five-point Capriles edge — then outside forces will intervene.

But will they?

“If I was from the United States, I’d vote for Obama,” Chavez said Sunday in an interview on state TV, adding that our president is a “good guy.” He also opined, “If Obama was from Barlovento or some Caracas neighborhood, he’d vote for Chavez.”

The likely messy outcome of Sunday’s election is an opportunity for Obama to prove Chavez (and Romney supporters who have seized on his dubious endorsement) wrong.

Chavez plainly expects Obama to stay above the Venezuelan fray no matter what. Proving him wrong would not only boost democracy (and US interests) in the region and beyond, it would help Obama prove to American voters that he’s got some foreign-policy backbone after all.

Twitter: @bennyavni