Venezuela’s Perez Returns to Power : After 10 Years, Ex-President Wins Election in Landslide

Former President Carlos Andres Perez, a social democratic champion of Third World causes, won a presidential election Sunday with a landslide triumph that will return him to office after 10 years out of power.

Projecting unofficial returns from most of the votes cast, the Venevision television network said Perez had won 51.7% of the ballots. Eduardo Fernandez, his Social Christian rival, took 36.3%, and the remaining 12% was divided among 21 other candidates, Venevision said.

Early, but fragmentary, official returns also had Perez in the lead. Perez’s party also was leading in simultaneous congressional elections, but the number of seats won by each party was not available.

Perez, 66, is the first Venezuelan president in three decades of democracy to win a second five-year term. Presidents are barred from immediate reelection. He will succeed President Jaime Lusinchi, a member of his party.

Fernandez conceded defeat late Sunday, offering congratulations “to President-elect Carlos Andres Perez. I offer him the collaboration of the strong opposition that we are going to give, a constructive opposition that will always put the interests of Venezuela above partial interests.”

In a televised victory speech, Perez said his main goal as president will be to govern with broad agreement among Venezuelans. “I will consult with all sectors of national life,” he promised.

He will return to office Feb. 2 with plans to press for more favorable economic treatment of developing countries by the United States and other industrialized nations. His demands include foreign debt relief, more advantageous terms of trade and a code to control multinational corporations.

After polls closed Sunday, cheering throngs of Perez supporters gathered on Caracas streets. They also celebrated by honking horns, lighting firecrackers and hanging white sheets out of windows. White symbolizes Perez’s center-left Democratic Action party, which currently holds power.

The election reinforced one of Latin America’s most enduring democracies, uninterrupted in the past 30 years. On a weekend when rebellious troops shook the democracy of Argentina at the other end of South America, all-day television coverage of the heavy turnout and orderly voting here underlined Venezuela’s “democratic vocation.”

Perez called the Argentine rebellion “a new uprising by groups that have not calmed down and have not learned that the time has passed for dictatorships in Latin America.”

This country’s last military dictator, Gen. Marcos Perez Jimenez, was overthrown in 1958 after eight years in power. A provisional government called elections for the same year.

Romulo Betancourt, a founder of Perez’s party, won the 1958 contest and later survived attempts by right-wing military insurgents and leftist guerrillas to overthrow him. He became the first popularly elected Venezuelan president to finish his term and hand power to an elected successor.

Elections since then have progressively consolidated democracy in this oil-exporting country of 18 million.

With Sunday’s victory, Democratic Action will have won five of the seven elections since 1958. Fernandez’s Social Christians, known here by the Spanish acronym COPEI, have won two, in 1968 and 1978.

As in previous Venezuelan campaigns, both major parties this year hired big-name American political consultants to help direct expensive media campaigns.

Charismatic Campaigner

Major elements in Perez’s winning campaign were his magnetic personality and nostalgia for the years of his previous presidency, 1974 to 1979, when world oil prices were soaring and the national economy was booming.

Fernandez was handicapped by memories of his own party’s last period in power, 1979 to 1983, when falling petroleum prices and rising interest rates brought on an economic slump that continues today.

In his previous administration, Perez nationalized foreign-owned petroleum companies and participated in efforts by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries to raise world oil prices. He openly supported the successful Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua and often criticized U.S. policy toward Latin America.

During this campaign, Perez said he will sharply reduce payments on Venezuela’s $30-billion foreign debt.