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Sunday, Dec 16, 2012 12:00 PM UTC

Venezuelan elections a test for Chavez’s movement

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Topics: From the Wires,

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Venezuelans are choosing governors and state lawmakers in elections that have become a key test of whether President Hugo Chavez’s movement can endure if the cancer he is battling proves terminal.

Voters were awakened before dawn by fireworks and reveille blaring from speakers mounted on trucks in some areas of Caracas.

Governorships in all of the country’s 23 states are being decided in the elections. Chavez’s party currently controls all but eight of the states, and if it maintains its dominance the vote could help the president’s allies deepen his socialist policies.

Sunday’s vote is the first time in Chavez’s nearly 14-year-old presidency that he has been unable to actively campaign. He hasn’t spoken publicly since undergoing cancer surgery on Tuesday in Cuba.

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