BY JUAN O. TAMAYO

 CARACAS, Venezuela -- In the last two months, President Hugo Chávez has asserted that he would remain in power until 2013, seize
 emergency powers if he has to and embrace "a revolution with weapons'' if he must.

 Impulsive, populist and with a strong authoritarian bent, the 46-year-old former army lieutenant colonel often has stirred controversy with
 rhetoric that seems taken straight from a 1960s Marxist radical's handbook.

 Now, midway through Chávez's third year in power, his government is going through one of its roughest patches, less because of his
 rhetoric than the chaotic disarray of the ``peaceful revolution'' that Chávez vowed would create a better Venezuela.

 High crime and unemployment are eroding his popularity. Labor unions strike constantly and manage to beat back his efforts to control
 them. The Catholic church says his government is full of ``incompetence and cronyism,'' and the Supreme Court chief has branded his
 judicial reforms a failure.

 The government of a man elected by a landslide in 1998 on a promise to end the epic dishonesty of the old Venezuela now finds itself
 plagued by corruption scandals.

 Clearly frustrated, Chávez is taking drastic measures to help revive and defend his ideology -- steps that critics say are a prelude to a dictatorship much like his friend Fidel Castro's in Cuba.

 He is resurrecting the radical group that backed his 1992 coup attempt, the Bolivarian Revolutionary Movement, or MBR, under the leadership of hardline former
 communist Guillermo Garcia Ponce and with Communist Party help.

 ``We count on you comrades,'' Chávez told communist supporters recently. ``The goal is clear: Smash the conspiracy and promote the revolution.''

 The MBR withered after Chávez won the 1998 election with backing from the more moderate Fifth Republic Movement, or MVR, a loose-knit political party that controls the legislative National Assembly.

 POWERFUL MINISTER

 Chávez's move seems partly aimed at countering the power of Interior Minister Luís Miquilena, another former communist who has opposed some of his more radical ideas and may control more of the MVR than the president himself.

 Miquilena has become the focus of recent speculation that if Chávez becomes too troublesome, the MVR would switch to a ``Chavismo without Chávez,'' said Angel Alvarez, a political scientist at the Central University of Venezuela.

 While the MBR is being reorganized in neighborhood groups, similar to Cuba's infamous Committees for the Defense of the Revolution, Chávez supporters say they are merely the base organizations of the national party.

 Chávez also has begun mobilizing 10,000 army reservists for what he calls civic action and employment programs for Venezuela's poor, but what opponents fear will be a loyal militia should the regular military's support for Chávez falter.

 The U.S. government has looked on patiently as Chávez forged close ties with Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Russia and China, saying that he has always played by the rules of
 democracy.

 But his Venezuelan political opponents believe this is the moment to strike and are all but pushing a campaign of civil disruptions, replete with rumors of coups, in hopes of forcing out Chávez long before the next elections in May 2006.

 The opposition is also pushing allegations that Chávez and his friends protected fugitive Peruvian spymaster Vladimiro Montesinos until his arrest last week in Caracas, apparently after spending six months hiding in Venezuela.

 Defense Minister José Vicente Rangel earlier this year dismissed the coup rumors as the ``desperate intrigues'' of foes trying to sow panic and perhaps spark a U.S.
 intervention, "like another Bay of Pigs.''

 OIL SALES FUEL ECONOMY

 By all measures, Chávez should be doing better as head of this nation of 24 million people where the government earns 40 percent of its income from oil sales. That
 includes 15 percent of U.S. crude and oil product imports.

 With Venezuelan oil prices at a relatively high $22 to $24 per barrel, the economy grew 3.5 percent in 2000 and is expected to expand by 4.3 percent this year. Inflation stands at 12 percent, and hard currency reserves have risen to a comfortable $21 billion.

 Chávez controls the legislature, justice system and military, and rules under a 1999 constitution that he all but wrote, a combination that gives him more power than any Venezuelan president in 65 years.

 Seeking to help the poorest of the country's poor, he has put the army to work building schools and distributing food at subsidized prices, and brought in 175 Cuban
 doctors to work in city slums and rural areas.

 "We have made tremendous advances in such a short time that the opposition and the media just don't want to see,'' Tarek William Saab, head of the National
 Assembly's Foreign Relations Committee, said in an interview.

 And even if his rhetoric has deeply alienated the middle and upper classes, it has secured his popularity among the 60 percent of Venezuelans who, according to U.N. figures, live in "extreme'' or "critical'' poverty.

 ``Even if he can do only a little for us, we've never had a president who defended us, the poor, so much,'' said Emelina Maigualida, 40, a mother of six who earns $80 a month selling cigarettes and gum on Caracas streets.

 INCOMPETENCE, CONFUSION

 But the rest of Chávez's performance has been marked by incompetence and confusion -- 20 Cabinet shifts in 26 months -- that have left Venezuelans debating almost constantly whether he's another Castro or just an inept blowhard.

 His threat in May to order banks to lower interest rates sparked a run on U.S. dollars and forced the Central Bank to spend $280 million in reserves defending the
 currency, the Bolívar.

 A few days later he confirmed he was considering declaring a ``state of exception'' that would give him emergency powers to rule by decree on crime and corruption, and vowed that his "revolution'' would not be stopped.

 "I am convinced that if for some reason this attempt to carry out a peaceful revolution does not work, what will come later will be a revolution with weapons,'' he said.

 He later downplayed the possibility of seizing emergency powers but declared that ``if God wills it, this humble servant will govern Venezuela until 2013'' -- when he would complete the maximum presidential terms allowed by the constitution.

 At the root of the growing discontent with Chávez are crime, which has soared 80 percent since 1998, and joblessness, with 13 percent unemployment and 50 percent of Venezuelans working at something less than a full-time job.

 Between 60 and 100 people are killed on an average Caracas weekend. Those Venezuelans who can afford them live behind barred doors and windows, and 10,000 marched to the legislature earlier this month to demand tougher anti-crime laws.

 But Chávez's critics have a slew of other complaints.

 His attempts to politicize the educational system and avowed admiration for Castro have driven tens of thousands to move money and families abroad, creating a
 significant brain and capital drain.

 Chávez's promised government and land reforms have gone nowhere, and businessmen say that while he has tried hard to attract foreign investors, he has made it harder for Venezuelans to invest in their own nation.

 Opposition politicians say the disarray is the result of Chávez's pseudo-Leninist penchant for destroying the nation's institutions and starting anew, rather than trying to slowly reform them.

 ``He has broken every bone in society, and now this is a society that just cannot walk,'' said Julio Bórges, head of Justice First, a party made up largely of young lawyers and popular among the middle classes.

 Many opposition leaders believe Chávez's days in power are numbered. ``A fall in oil prices will be the fall of Chávez,'' said Liliana Hernández, a lawmaker from the
 once-powerful Democratic Action party, which was destroyed by Chávez's electoral victory.

 DISRUPTIONS SOUGHT

 But some are trying to bring that day closer by all but calling for a campaign of civil disruptions.

 "This is going to the streets,'' said Francisco Arias Cárdenas, a former army lieutenant colonel who took part in the 1992 coup attempt but ran against Chávez in elections last July required by the new constitution.

 "We need to integrate the opposition and look for spaces to force an intelligent confrontation, in which Chávez will have to answer our concerns or leave,'' Arias said in an interview. "We're not going to wait for six years.''

 In the meantime, Chávez and his opponents are almost daring each other to take illegal measures to seize or retain power, so that they can then legitimize any reply.

 "We're at war here,'' said anti-Chávez lawyer Ricardo Koeling, showing a visitor the pistol he keeps atop his desk and the shotgun he hides under it ``in case Chávez's people try to kill me.''

 ``The opposition is virtually inciting to violence. They seem, behind all this, to be trying to goad us into snapping the constitutional thread,'' Saab said.

 So far, Chávez has stayed barely within the bounds of constitutional rule, verbally flogging but not jailing his critics, lambasting but not censuring the media, menacing but always stopping short of action.

 Yet his opposition led the Organization of American States earlier this month to postpone approval of a U.S.-backed agreement that would require OAS sanctions on any ruler who deviates from "representative democracy.''

 Foreign Minister Luis Dávila later said the text proposed at a meeting in Costa Rica did not take into account Chávez's brand of ``participatory democracy,'' a vague
 system under which the presumed wishes of the masses take precedence over the strict rules of democracy.

 "This is like boxers in the first round, testing each other,'' said Anibal Romero, a political scientist at the Simón Bolívar University. ``But there is no reconciliation possible, and this will have to come to blows.''

                                   © 2001