CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelans will vote April 14 to choose a successor to Hugo Chavez, the elections commission announced Saturday as increasingly strident political rhetoric begins to roil this polarized country.
The constitution mandated the election be held within 30 days of Chavez’s March 5 death, but the date picked falls outside that period. Critics of the socialist government already complained that officials violated the constitution by swearing in Vice President Nicolas Maduro as acting leader Friday night.
Some people have speculated Venezuela will not be ready to organize the vote in time, but elections council chief Tibisay Lucena said the country’s electronic voting system was fully prepared.
Tibisay announced the date on state television, appearing in a small inset as the main picture showed people filing past Chavez’s coffin at the military academy in Caracas, where his body has lain in state since Wednesday.
Chavez’s boisterous, passionate state funeral Friday often felt like a political rally for his anointed successor, Maduro, who eulogized him by pledging eternal loyalty and vowing Chavez’s movement will never be defeated. Maduro is expected to become the candidate of Chavez’s socialist party.
Ramon Guillermo Aveledo, coordinator of the opposition coalition, immediately followed the election announcement by offering his bloc’s presidential candidacy to Henrique Capriles, the governor of Miranda state who lost to Chavez in October.
Mariana Bacalao, a professor of public opinion at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, said the passion on both sides just hours after Chavez’s funeral raised fear of far worse to come in the weeks ahead.
“You can expect during the campaign that these rages will be unleashed,” she said.
In his speech after his swearing-in, Maduro took shots at the United States, the media, international capitalism and domestic opponents he often depicted as treacherous. He claimed the allegiance of Venezuela’s army, referring to them as the “armed forces of Chavez,” despite the constitution barring the military from taking sides in politics.
The opposition has denounced the transition as an unconstitutional power grab, and Capriles said his side was studying its strategy for the vote, which will be held in the shadow of the government’s efforts to immortalize Chavez. Since his death, the former paratrooper has been compared to Jesus Christ and early 19th century Venezuelan liberator Simon Bolivar, and the government announced that his body would be embalmed and put on eternal display.
