Voters in Venezuela have stopped President Hugo Chavez from obtaining the two-thirds majority the Socialist leader said he needed in the National Assembly to effortlessly pass what he calls critical reforms.
According to incomplete returns released Monday, Chavez's United Socialist Party on Sunday won at least 94 of 165 seats, while his most ardent foes took 60. The rest of the votes had either not been determined or went to a small leftist party, Fatherland for All, that recently broke with the president.
Opposition leaders called the vote a setback for Chavez because it means his congressional allies will need to negotiate to approve laws and make important appointments, including those of Supreme Court judges.
"Clearly a majority of the country has expressed itself for a change in the National Assembly," Ramon Guillermo Avelado, director of the opposition's coalition of candidates, told Venevision television. "That is a win for all Venezuelans, not just for those who voted for our candidates."
Leaders from the opposition's Democratic Unity Table said that they had won a slight majority of the popular vote. But under a recent government reform of electoral districts, the votes in rural areas where the president is more popular carry far more weight than urban votes in cities like Caracas, where the opposition is entrenched.
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