Venezuela to probe poison suspicions

A supporter of late Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez awaits her turn to pay last homage to the leader, in Caracas, on Tuesday. The campaign to succeed the late president has officially begun. [Photo/Agencies]

Muduro is trying to keep voters' attention firmly focused on Chavez to benefit from the outpouring of grief among his millions of supporters. The opposition is centering its campaign on portraying Maduro, a former bus driver, as an incompetent who, they say, is exploiting Chavez's demise.

"Let's take the president (Chavez) away from the political debate, out of respect for his memory, his family, his supporters," opposition candidate Capriles' campaign chief Henri Falcon told reporters.

Polls from before Chavez's death gave Maduro a lead over Capriles of more than 10 percentage points. Capriles lost to Chavez by 11 percentage points in October.

Capriles has tried to jump-start his campaign with accusations that Maduro and other senior officials lied about the details of Chavez's illness, hiding the gravity of his condition from Venezuelans.

That sparked a torrent of attacks, with senior government officials using words such as "Nazi" and "fascist" to describe Capriles, who has Jewish ancestors.

In a televised message, Information Minister Ernesto Villegas read a letter to the "sick opposition" from the late president's daughter, Maria Gabriela Chavez, who has at times been viewed as a possible future successor.

"Stop playing with the pain of a nation and a devastated family," she wrote. "It is unfair, inhuman, unacceptable that they now say we were lying about the date of his (death) ... focus on politics, don't play dirty."

Capriles was quick to respond with a flurry of tweets.

"Never, in all these years, have I offended the president or his family. If one word has been taken thus by his family, I'm sorry," he wrote on Twitter.

"I don't offend families as they have mine. They have even called me a Nazi, when my great-grandparents were murdered in a Nazi concentration camp," he added.

Reuters-Xinhua