Pro-Chavez candidates set to sweep congressional vote

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez’s governing party predicted it had won a sweeping victory in congressional elections, citing internal party counts suggesting its candidates had won more than two-thirds of seats.

Willian Lara, a leader of Chavez’s Fifth Republic Movement party, said pro-Chavez candidates – including allies from other parties – could win all 167 seats in the National Assembly.

“The Fifth Republic Movement has won, in total, the election of 114 politicians who are militants” Lara said.

“According to the figures that we have, the 167 members of the National Assembly … are supporters of the national project” led by Chavez.

Lara spoke before official results were available. Caravans of Chavez supporters drove through the streets honking horns to celebrate after a vote boycotted by several opposition parties that complained they did not trust the voting system.

With 79% of votes counted, officials estimated turnout at 25%, said National Electoral Council chief Jorge Rodriguez.

Officials said government foes had tried to disrupt the vote by blowing up an oil pipeline. They called the pipeline explosion on Saturday night a failed plot aimed at paralysing supplies to Venezuela’s largest oil refinery and destabilising the country.

Thousands of soldiers were deployed to keep order during the vote, and there were no reports of violence.

Chavez dismissed the boycott by some parties as a failed ploy to sabotage legitimate elections and avoid an embarrassing defeat.

“The whole world knows a true democracy is in motion here in Venezuela,” Chavez said after voting at a school where cheering supporters greeted him.

Maria Corina Machado, who leads the US-backed vote watchdog group Sumate, called the vote “illegitimate”.

“We are going to have a single party parliament that doesn’t represent ample sectors of society,” she said in a statement.

Government officials say the US has been meddling in the elections through Sumate, which receives money from the Washington-based National Endowment for Democracy, a private group funded by the US Congress.

Venezuelan Foreign Minister Ali Rodriguez has called Sumate leaders “mercenaries of the US government".

Chavez accused the US, with which he often clashes, of being behind the boycott – a charge Washington has denied.

Chavez said Venezuela had the most solid electoral system in South America, and that its integrity was secure despite “attempts to sabotage this process".

Government officials reported several disturbances leading up to the vote, including blasts from small explosives that injured three people in Caracas on Friday and the pipeline explosion Saturday in the western state of Zulia.