Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chavez won re-election on Sunday, quashing the opposition’s best chance at unseating him in 14 years and cementing himself as a dominant figure in modern Latin American history. The 58-year-old Chavez took 54.42 percent of the vote, with 90 percent of the ballots counted, to 44.97 percent for the young opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, official results showed. Chavez’s victory would extend his rule of the OPEC member state to two decades, though he is recovering from cancer and the possibility of a recurrence hangs over his political future.
