Chavez hails Venezuela vote win slammed by rivals

By Saul Hudson

CARACAS (Reuters) - Hugo Chavez and his supporters celebrated an election victory that allows him to seek another term as president in polarized Venezuela, as opponents complained on Monday that his use of state funds had made the campaign unfair.

Chavez, who has been in power for 10 years and vows to rule for decades, pledged to repay his poor backers for Sunday's victory by combating their No. 1 concern -- crime that has given the OPEC nation one of the world's worst murder rates.

The fragmented opposition, which was spearheaded by an inexperienced and underfinanced student movement, said the former paratrooper's win was secured with huge government funding and blanket state television coverage.

"Another sham" was the editorial headline of leading opposition newspaper El Nacional, which complained that Venezuela's electoral commission favored "a military regime that promotes hatred and divides Venezuela in two halves."

Popular for spending freely on clinics, schools and food hand-outs in city slums and remote villages, Chavez won 54 percent of the vote, allowing him to stand for office as long as he keeps winning elections.

His red-clad faithful partied in shantytowns around the capital Caracas with chants of "Heh-ho, Chavez won't go."

Veteran rival Teodoro Petkoff denounced Chavez's "illegal and unscrupulous" use of state funds but also captured the mood of defiance in an opposition that must now seek to defeat him in a presidential vote in just under four years.

"They can celebrate today, but on the horizon of 2012 looms a ghost of his inevitable defeat," Petkoff wrote in a front page editorial in his Tal Cual newspaper.