They have an election coming up and there is a strong candidate running against Chavez.
From the UK Telegraph:
Venezuela's marathon man looks to run down Chavez
Soaked by rain and perspiration, Henrique Capriles retreated reluctantly inside his campaign bus as the horn-blowing, flag-waving convoy crept through the pot-holed streets of the slums of Maracaibo, Venezuela's second city.
A late evening tropical thunderstorm had finally forced him from his place atop a pick-up truck after a typical 12-hour day of rapturous rallies and rock-star receptions for the dashing 40-year-old opposition leader.
Undeterred by the downpour, the exuberant crowds outside chanted his name as firecrackers erupted in the pitch-darkness that is graphic testimony to the failure of the country with the world's largest oil reserves to deliver electricity to its own poor.
In Venezuela's presidential elections on Sunday, Mr Capriles faces one of the toughest challenges in global politics - defeating Hugo Chavez.
A bit more:
But despite its energy riches, the country is mired in debt and unemployment as state-imposed price and exchange rate controls shackle the economy. And violent crime is so endemic that Caracas has the unenviable ranking of the murder capital of the world.
Now, with the long-divided opposition united for the first time behind a charismatic state governor who is already a veteran of Venezuela's rough-and-tumble politics despite his youthful years, President Chavez is facing his most serious competition at the ballot box since he came to power in 1998.
Chavez is ruling by ideology, not intelligence. He handed out more and more free stuff to Venezuela's "poor" and didn't realize that this is a never-ending spiral path to bankruptcy -- something this current administration is blissfully unaware of.
A bit more -- Mr. Capriles' campaign promises:
On his first day in office, he said, he would halt the "gifts" of free or heavily-subsidized oil to Mr Chavez's left-wing ideological allies in Cuba and Nicaragua. Nor would there be any more discount deals to sympathetic Western leaders such as Ken Livingstone, a Chavez admirer who as London mayor negotiated cheap oil from Caracas for the capital's buses.
The cosy relationship with Iran would end, Mr Capriles added, and he would also review the land expropriations conducted under Mr Chavez's agrarian reform "fiasco" - including the seizure of estates from Britain's Vestey Group.
"We have so many problems here in Venezuela, but Chavez's priority is to create his own world revolution," he said.
"His land reform programme has been a disaster and he sends billions of dollars of oil abroad each year, but there are hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have problems putting food on the table.
"For Chavez, that is not important. What matters to him is building what he calls his 21st century socialism."
Hear hear -- hope he wins by a landslide. Send a message.
