Feed Them Once, Feed Them Twice, Feed Them Chicken Soup With Rice

Hey, whatever works!

Odalys Ibarra has lived in the same home - a decrepit, two-bedroom brick house that she shares with 10 others - her entire life.

Yet these days, on her walk home up the steep slope of El Valle, one of the poorest neighborhoods in this capital city, she passes a free medical clinic staffed with Cuban doctors, a supermarket that sells discounted rice and tomato sauce, and a state-funded kitchen that prepares and gives out free meat stew and cookies - programs called "missions" that are the cornerstone of President Hugo Chávez's domestic policy.

While Mr. Chávez's strident anti-Americanism has caused ripples abroad - calling President Bush the devil and supporting leftist candidates and leaders throughout Latin America, as well as befriending Iran and North Korea - those with the power to vote him into another six-year term this Sunday care more about his social missions than his international mediations.

After eight years at the helm of Venezuela - having withstood a coup attempt, a national oil strike led by his opponents, and a recall referendum in 2004 that he easily won - Mr. Chávez is poised to prevail in the 2006 presidential election on Sunday. The latest state-funded poll by the US firm Evans/ McDonough puts him 19 points ahead of his only opponent, Manuel Rosales, a career politician and governor of the oil-rich western state of Zulia.

Venezuelans are bitterly divided over Chávez's ideology, but they can agree on one thing: Many will vote for him Sunday because the billions he has poured into literacy programs, free food, and doctor visits have proved a potent enticement.

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