Chavez’s opponent leads massive rally

CARACAS, Venezuela – Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans packed a major highway Saturday in a rally for opposition presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, one of the largest demonstrations against President Hugo Chavez in years.

Shouts of “Dare to change!” rose up from the dense crowd filling the highway for several miles and spilling into nearby overpasses and streets in Venezuela’s capital, Caracas. The rally came eight days before the country’s presidential election.

Rosales, speaking from a stage, promised democracy for a country he said was sinking into Cuba-style authoritarianism under Chavez.

Organizers claimed more than 1 million people attended.

Rosales, the governor of the oil-rich western state of Zulia who favors a free-market economy over Chavez’s brand of socialism, trailed the Venezuelan president by a wide margin in an AP-Ipsos poll conducted earlier this month.

However, his candidacy has managed to galvanize Venezuela’s fractured opposition, reviving a movement that had struggled to recover from a defeat in a 2004 recall referendum against Chavez.

Rosales said the vast crowd on Saturday was proof he would defeat Chavez.

“It’s Caracas in the streets,” he said. “A great avalanche of votes!”

Despite the revived opposition movement, Chavez remains hugely popular among the poor, especially those who see benefits from oil-funded social programs ranging from free health care to heavily subsidized government grocery stores.

Rosales lashed out at Chavez for wanting to be “president all his life, until he dies like Fidel Castro – indefinite re-election.”

Chavez, first elected in 1998, has said he wants to continue governing Venezuela until 2021 or longer. He said he plans to ask Venezuelans in a referendum if they support changing the constitution to allow indefinite re-election.