Chavez Victorioso!

With approximately 80% of the ballots counted, Chavez appears to have received about 61% of the vote, compared with the 38% received by his opponent Manuel Rosales, current governor of the oil-rich western state of Zulia. This is a decisive victory for Chavez and a resounding endorsement of his policies.

The opposition leader Señor Rosales, a so-called social-democrat, said he would go on "fighting for democracy" - in the streets if necessary. This Orwellian turn of phrase indicates that Señor Rosales does not accept that the will of the majority as expressed through the ballot box constitutes democracy. What Rosales really intends to do is to go on fighting the will of the majority –fighting against democracy. In other words, Rosales is a social democrat in name only.

Officials working with the Rosales campaign maintained that there were electoral irregularities, including the refusal of officials of the National Election Commission at some polls to open ballot boxes for audits, as is required by law. The Rosales campaign also complained that voting booths were kept open past the deadline. Given their shady history, it is not entirely unexpected that the opposition would make such accusations and they have yet to offer any substantive evidence that they contain even the tiniest shred of truth. It is true that polling stations remained open after the deadline, as it is electoral tradition in Venezuela that polls remain open until all in the queue at each station at the time of closing have had a chance to vote. So far there have been no comments on these alleged irregularities by international election observers.

Rosales maintains that the long-term future of the country lies in the implementation of free-market policies and through attracting foreign investment, and in doing so propagates the myth of a “free” market that in reality is anything but free. Rosales promotes the sort of foreign investment that is little more than the legalised pillage of his country’s resources by multinationals – for which he would probably expected to be paid handsomely and from which the average Venezuelan could expect to gain nothing. The foreign investment that Rosales so desperately seeks should be more correctly termed foreign divestment.

Chavez also stands accused by Rosales of having concentrated power in his own hands while at the same time having squandered Venezuela's resources – a charge that is loaded with irony, given that the repulsively wealthy and unbelievably tawdry “miami set”, the descendants of conquistadors and a comparatively small minority of Venezuelan society, have been guilty of concentrating the lion’s share of power in their own hands. This same group of people have also culpable of effectively handing over Venezuelan resources to foreign powers at knock-down prices so that they can feather their own nests, and carry on with their competitive petit- bourgeois displays of affluence.