CARACAS--Venezuelan state governor Henrique Capriles won an opposition primary on Sunday, setting up a potentially close battle with President Hugo Chavez in the South American OPEC member nation's October vote, sources said.
Official results had not been released by mid-evening, but a senior Capriles ally told Reuters he had won, and the governor's camp set up a stage at their Caracas headquarters in apparent preparation for victory celebrations. "Yes, of course, he won well," opposition colleague Leopoldo Lopez told reporters when asked if the Miranda governor was victorious.
Several aides to Pablo Perez, Capriles' main competition and the governor of Zulia state, also told Reuters their candidate had lost the Democratic Unity coalition election.
Turnout appeared to be around the 2 million mark--a figure the opposition will hail as a strong showing ahead of their campaign to end 13 years of Chavez's socialist "revolution."
The reaction of losers in Sunday's opposition primary will show if the coalition is ready to rally behind the winner and mount a dynamic campaign that could chip away at Chavez's popularity ahead of the Oct. 7 presidential election. If confirmed as the coalition candidate, the center-left Capriles, 39, will play up his youthful energy and experience governing Miranda state to counter Chavez's vast government spending and popularity among the poor.
Thwarted by the wily Chavez since 1998, Venezuela's opposition sees the election as its best chance to end what it views as a disastrous, Cuban-style socialist rule that has scared investors and wrecked the economy. Chavez supporters say the opposition represents an old, discredited political elite who paid scant attention to the poor majority in the past and will never beat the president. Polls show Chavez has an edge heading into the October election.
Chavez, 57, has won almost all of a dozen or so national votes in Venezuela since taking power in 1999, and has survived national strikes, massive street protests and even a brief military coup that toppled him for 36 hours.
"I aim to be a president who talks much less, who doesn't invade Venezuelans' personal lives so much," Capriles said this week in a pointed reference to Chavez's longwinded speeches, which local media are often obliged to run live.
Capriles hails Brazil's market-friendly but socially conscious policy model as his inspiration and has said he would take a "no shocks" approach to dismantling Chavez's statist economic policies, such as currency controls. He might, though, move faster to end controversial friendships with anti-U.S. figures like the leaders of Iran, Cuba and Belarus.
Sunday's voting was smooth with long, orderly lines around pro-opposition neighborhoods of the capital Caracas, where walls were plastered with the candidates' posters. Young activists rode motorbikes exhorting voters to head to the polls. Chavez strongholds were largely devoid of opposition propaganda, however, and state TV gleefully broadcast images of some semi-deserted polling centers with just one or two voters.
