Hugo Chavez, the left-wing incumbent and outspoken critic of the United States, seeks a new six-year term to complete his socialist revolution.

His main challenger, Manuel Rosales, wants to keep a market-based system. Mr Chavez has won support from millions of poor Venezuelans by using oil wealth to boost social programmes. He is widely expected to win but Mr Rosales has been gaining in popularity and leads an opposition that seems more united than it did a year ago.

Whoever wins the election will have to try to unite a deeply divided country or face much political instability, the BBC?s Greg Morsbach reported yesterday from Caracas.

Venezuela?s 16 million voters are deciding whether Mr Chavez should be rewarded with another term in office. Mr Chavez, who rose to power in 1999 amid widespread disenchantment with the old political order, has promised to consolidate what he calls his ?social revolution?. He has garnered support by using the boom in oil revenues to redistribute wealth to the poor.

?This is our last chance?

?Chavez was sent here by God,? Rosa Gonzalez, 41, told the Associated Press news agency. ?He knows what it is to be poor. He suffered it as a boy, and that?s why he understands us and tries to help us,? she said.

However, Margarita Nunez, a 23-year-old student, told AP she feared the radical plans that Mr Chavez may have in mind.

?This is our last chance,? she said. ?This is the last time we can stop him from ruining this country.?

Mr Chavez?s critics accuse him of concentrating power in his own hands and squandering Venezuela?s oil wealth.

Mr Rosales, governor of the oil-rich western state of Zulia, says Venezuela?s long-term interests lie in free-market policies and attracting foreign investment. He has pledged to roll back policies which, he says, are leading the country towards a Cuban-style communist system.

Hundreds of international election observers are in Venezuela, including from the European Union and the Organisation of American States.

PROFILE

■ Hugo Chavez, who has endured a rough political ride since first coming to power in 1998, is the subject of both adulation and loathing both at home and abroad. Venezuelans are split between a majority who says he speaks for the poor, and those who say he has become increasingly autocratic. His supporters say he is the first Venezuelan to defend the rights of the poor. Critics accuse him of trying to emulate Cuba?s communist system. The former army paratrooper - who first came to prominence as a leader of a failed coup in 1992 - has proved unable to bridge the huge gap between the country?s rich and poor, and his combative rhetoric has alienated and alarmed the country?s traditional political elite. The opposition has been trying to unseat the president by constitutional means since 2002 - after a short-lived coup against him - and in 2004 it managed to secure a referendum on his leadership. But the vote only served to strengthen Mr Chavez. He won by a large majority and insisted that he would run for another six-year term in the December 2006 elections. He has also suggested that he may seek changes to the constitution to enable him to run again in 2012.

Revolutionary promises When Mr Chavez was swept into power in the 1998 elections, the old Venezuelan order was falling apart. Unlike most of its neighbours, the country had enjoyed an unbroken period of democratic government since 1958. But the two main parties that had alternated in power stood accused of presiding over a corrupt system and squandering the country?s vast oil wealth. Hugo Chavez promised ?revolutionary? social policies, and constantly abused the ?predatory oligarchs? of the establishment as corrupt servants of international capital. This leader, who never missed an opportunity to address the nation, once described oil executives as living in ?luxury chalets where they perform orgies, drinking whisky?. Church leaders in this overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country fared no better. ?They do not walk in... the path of Christ,? said Mr Chavez at one stage. Whenever the media reported discontent with his rule, he generally accused it of being in the pay of reactionaries. He courted controversy in foreign policy, too, making high-profile visits to Cuba and Iraq, while allegedly flirting with leftist rebels in Colombia and making a huge territorial claim on Guyana. Relations with Washington reached a new low when he accused it of ?fighting terror with terror? during the war in Afghanistan after 11 September. The situation hardly improved when Mr Chavez accused the US of being behind the failed coup to oust him in 2002. The country?s vast oil reserves ? the largest in the Americas ? have given it a strategic importance, but the US state department denies trying to overthrow the president. Mr Chavez?s government has implemented a number of ?missions? or social programmes, including education and health services for all. But chronic poverty and unemployment are still widespread, despite the country?s oil wealth. The ex-paratrooper?s journey along the road to power has been an eventful one. In February 1992, he led an attempt to overthrow the government of President Carlos Andres Perez amid growing anger at economic austerity measures. The foundations for that failed coup had been laid a decade earlier, when Mr Chavez and a group of fellow military officers founded a secret movement named after the South American independence leader, Simon Bolivar. The February revolt by members of the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement claimed 18 lives and left 60 injured before Mr Chavez gave himself up. He was languishing in a military jail when his associates tried again to seize power nine months later. That second coup attempt, in November 1992, was crushed as well.

Mr Chavez spent two years in prison before being granted a pardon. He then relaunched his party as the Movement of the Fifth Republic and made the transition from soldier to politician.