Presidential candidates plow through Holy Week with insults

CARACAS, (AP):Not even the observance of Holy Week stopped Venezuela's time-pressed presidential candidates from sprinting through the holidays towards an April 14 election to replace the late Hugo Chávez.

Nicolas Maduro, Chávez's chosen successor, and opposition Governor Henrique Capriles, face the challenge of spelling out a vision for a future without Chávez, who dominated this 28 million-person country like few other leaders have during his 14 years in power.

That has produced a race sometimes jarring in its aggressiveness and exhausting in its tempo.

MULTIPLE RALLIES

Both candidates have led multiple rallies each day and used deeply personal language against each other. Maduro has even threatened to have Capriles imprisoned for questioning whether Chávez really died on March 5, as the government had announced.

Maduro has used the government's enormous bureaucracy and its media to tie himself closely to Chávez, with the late president's image often hung on podiums in front of the candidate or serving as a backdrop.

Capriles, for his part, has barely had time to rest after losing a hard-fought race to Chávez in October, when he received 45 per cent of the vote, and then campaigning in December for reelection as governor of Miranda state.

At passionate rallies that take on the feel of rock concerts, Capriles has shouted that "Maduro is not Chávez" while calling attention to Venezuela's high crime rate, its overvalued currency, its overreliance on food imports and its 22 per cent inflation rate, the highest in Latin America.