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Venezuela's Chavez Wins Presidential Elections

AS/COA’s Eric Farnsworth questions President Hugo Chávez’s political path after Sunday’s electoral victory in Venezuela. 

CARACAS--President Hugo Chavez fought off a formidable opposition challenge to win re-election on Sunday, extending his rule over Venezuela with a new six-year term, despite questions surrounding his health following his recent battle with cancer.

With 90% of the ballots counted, election authorities announced that Mr. Chavez, who first took office in 1999, had decisively won the bitterly contested election with 54.42% of the vote to 45% for his main rival, Henrique Capriles, a 40-year-old state governor.

Mr. Capriles conceded defeat and congratulated Mr. Chavez.

During the campaign, Mr. Chavez promised to deepen his self-styled leftist revolution, which has been marked by nationalizations of wide swaths of the economy and the president's increasingly autocratic control of the nation's governing institutions. Mr. Chavez also aligned Venezuela, which boasts the world's largest reserves of crude oil, with other U.S. antagonists, including Iran, Cuba and Russia.

Attention will now turn toward the ways in which Mr. Chavez will reinforce his statist policies. There will likely also be renewed focus on the health of the 58 year-old Mr. Chavez, an issue that rarely surfaced during the campaign.

"The question going forward is does Chavez go on the path that he's been going or does he increase the pace," said Eric Farnsworth, a vice president with the Council of the Americas business group, which supports freetrade. "That could be worrisome. Everything depends on his health...."

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