The world watches as voters go to the polls

CARACAS, (AP):Nicolas Maduro hopes to ride a tide of grief into Venezuela's special presidential election today and win voters' endorsement to succeed the late Hugo Chávez, the adored larger-than-life leader who chose him to carry on the messy, unfinished Chavista revolution.

That will mean inheriting multiple problems left behind by Chávez, troubles that have been harped on by opposition challenger Henrique Capriles.

Although he's still favoured, Maduro's early big lead in opinion polls sharply narrowed in the past week as Venezuelans grappled with a litany of woes many blame on Chávez's mismanagement of the economy and infrastructure: chronic power outages, double-digit inflation, food and medicine shortages.

Add to that rampant crime - Venezuela has among the world's highest homicide and kidnapping rates.

Maduro, a former union activist with close ties to Cuba's leaders who was Chávez's long-time foreign minister, hinted at feeling overwhelmed during his closing campaign speech to hundreds of thousands of red-shirted faithful last Thursday.

"I need your support. This job that Chávez left me is very difficult," said Maduro, who became acting president after Chávez succumbed to cancer March 5. "This business of being president and leader of a revolution is a pain in the neck."

Capriles, a 40-year-old state governor who lost to Chávez in October's regular presidential election, hammered away at the ruling socialists' record of unfulfilled promises as he criss-crossed Venezuela. His campaign libretto included reading aloud a list of unfinished road, bridge and rail projects before asking what goods were scarce on store shelves.

Maduro, 50, hewed to a simple message, a theme of the October presidential campaign: "I am Chávez. We are all Chávez." He promised to expand a myriad of anti-poverty programmes created by the man he called the "Jesus Christ of Latin America" and funded by $1 trillion in oil revenues during Chávez's 14-year rule.

His campaign mobilised a state bureaucracy of nearly 2.7 million workers that was built up by Chávez while he cemented a near monopoly on power, using loyalists in the judiciary to intimidate and diminish the opposition, particularly its broadcast media.

There are no easy answers for the troubles besetting Venezuela even though the country has the world's largest oil reserves.

Many factories in the heartland operate at half capacity because strict currency controls leave them short of the hard currency needed to pay for imports. Business leaders say some companies are on the verge of bankruptcy, unable to extend lines of credit with suppliers abroad.

The government blames shortages of milk, butter, corn flour and other staples on hoarding. The opposition points at the price controls imposed by Chávez in an attempt to cool double-digit inflation.

"Chávez is unique in having survived with high popularity through years of stagflation," said Siobhan Morden, head of Latin American strategy for Jefferies LLC.

But Maduro's "sympathy votes will fade" eventually, Morden said. "Can he survive a six-year term with stagflation? If he feels he has to grow the economy, what will he do given the ideological constraints?"

Capriles said he will reverse land expropriations, which he said have ruined some farms and turned Venezuela into a net importer of food, including beef and coffee.

But even Capriles said currency and price controls cannot be immediately scrapped without triggering a disastrous run on the bolivar. As a way of immediately injecting dollars into the economy, he proposes ending the shipment of cut-rate oil to Cuba.

He said he would also re-establish close ties with the United States, which Chávez has vilified since a 2002 coup attempt that Washington initially endorsed.

Maduro