Venezuela’s 17 years of socialist revolution rule, opposition victory deals a serious setback

Venezuela’s opposition coalition won at least 99 seats in the incoming 167-seat legislature, electoral authorities announced after midnight Sunday. The ruling socialist party won 46 seats. The 19 remaining races remain up for grabs but if enough are won by the opposition it could give the coalition a two-thirds supermajority needed to strongly challenge President Nicolas Maduro’s grip on power. The streets of the Venezuelan capital of Caracas broke out in shouts of joy, fireworks and car honks after National Electoral Council President Tibisay Lucena announced the partial results six hours after polls closed. In the plaza in wealthy eastern Caracas that was the epicenter of last year’s bloody anti-government protests, a small group of opponents, some of them sipping champagne, burned red shirts that are the obligatory revolutionary attire. “I can say today that the economic war has triumphed,” Maduro, surrounded by his party’s top leadership, said from the presidential



palace. The opposition victory deals a serious setback to the socialist revolution started almost 17 years ago by the late Hugo Chavez, who until his death in 2013 had an almost-magical hold on the political aspirations of Venezuela’s long-excluded masses. Maduro had repeatedly vowed in recent weeks to take to the streets and defend his mentor Chavez’s legacy if his party lost. But on Sunday night he softened his tone, urging his supporters to regroup from the loss in calm Now everything will just get worse. The Chavistas will go to war with the opposition,” said Diana Areaz, who waited with her friend who makes a living dressing up as Cuban revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara to hear the results. For Areaz, who was 8 years old when Chavez came to power, the defeat was unimaginable. Their work will be easier if they obtain a two-thirds majority of 112 lawmakers _ still a possibility if enough of the undecided races break the opposition’s way. Such a super majority would allow the congress to sack supreme court justices, pass major legislation and even convene a convention to rewrite Chavez’s 1999 constitution.