‘Voter Fatigue’ May Undercut Chavez Turnout

Marlene Blanco helped vote President Hugo Chavez into a five-year term, believing in the “social revolution” the former coup leader pledged for Venezuela. That was 1998.

Nineteen months and five elections later, the 32-year-old secretary still trusts Chavez. But she isn’t about to vote for him on Sunday. She isn’t going to vote at all.

“We’re used to voting every five years. We just got through an election,” she said. “To vote again is just absurd.”

Across Venezuela, people are tired of a seemingly eternal campaign. Analysts say “voter fatigue” could give Sunday’s elections for president, Congress, mayors, governors and just about everything else one of the lowest turnouts in history.

“People are tired and have lost their faith,” said Guillermo Moron, a historian and political commentator. “We’ve been in a campaign since 1998. There hasn’t been a single day of rest.”

It started in November 1998, with elections for Congress, governors and mayors. A month later, Chavez stunned the world by winning the presidency.

In April 1999, he called a nationwide referendum on whether to draft a new constitution that would replace Venezuela’s political order. He won, and four months later voters chose the group that would draft that constitution. They voted to approve the new constitution in December 1999.

Under the new system, all elected offices were to be “re-legitimized” in nationwide elections scheduled for May 28, balloting that would give Chavez a new, six-year term. When the computer system wasn’t ready, officials called off the vote at the last minute and rescheduled it for Sunday.

So the campaigning started again.

Now, at the end of it all, Chavez’s most fervent--and heartiest--supporters say they will vote one more time and then expect him to forget about the elections and start working on the problems on their minds: the economy, rampant crime and high unemployment.

“I’ve voted in all the elections, and I remember every one,” said Graciela Nunez, a 33-year-old sales clerk. “It’s good that we all go out to vote. You have to give your opinions. And we have to give him time to do everything he wants.”

Chavez’s main challenger is Francisco Arias Cardenas, who led a 1992 coup attempt with Chavez but broke away from the president this year. Arias has harnessed the anger of the middle and upper classes, who dislike Chavez’s class-driven rhetoric and who fear he will turn the country into a dictatorship.

But most Venezuelans are poor. And thanks in part to his Populist rhetoric in which he denounces the moneyed classes as enemies of the people, Chavez rides an easy 20 points ahead in the latest polls. Few expect him to lose, no matter how tired people may be of voting.

“We have to finish voting for Chavez,” said Robinson Quintero, a 45-year-old machinist. “He’s been campaigning for so long, he hasn’t had time to make the radical changes he wants to.”

At the “hot corner” of Caracas’ central Bolivar Square, about a dozen unemployed men heatedly debated politics Friday. Only there wasn’t much to debate; all supported Chavez.

“We have to vote to make this a true democracy. This will be the last election,” said Oscar Bides, 59.

Then he paused.

“Well, not the last. But there aren’t too many more to go.”