CARACAS: Henrique Capriles, the Venezuelan politician who is best positioned in the polls to defeat President Hugo Chavez, launched his campaign Wednesday to become the sole opposition candidate in next year's presidential elections.
"I call on everybody -- the old, the young, everybody -- to join us on the road of progress. We don't want to be a divided country, we want to be a single Venezuela," Capriles said in a speech to a rally here.
"This is not the moment of the left or the right, it is the hour of all Venezuelans. The new Venezuela is for everyone," he told supporters wearing shirts in the yellow, blue and red colors of the Venezuelan flag.
Capriles, 39, aims to be elected through a series of primary elections to be the sole opposition candidate to face off against Chavez, who is battling cancer but has said he will run again for a third term after 12 years in power.
Capriles has had a meteoric political career -- president of the National Assembly's Chamber of Deputies, mayor and since 2008 governor of the northern state of Miranda, the country's second most populous with three million people, including parts of the Caracas metropolitan area.
He believes Venezuela should wean itself from a dependence on oil, which accounts for 90 percent of the country's revenues.
"We should think of oil as a giant lever to lift us out of a dependence on oil. We have a country that can produce everything we need," he said.
So far, nearly a dozen opposition leaders have announced they will run in the primaries for the chance to go up against Chavez, who has dominated Venezuelan politics since coming to power in 1999.
After boycotting elections in 2005, the opposition fielded a unified slate of candidates in legislative elections last year and nearly tied with the ruling United Socialist Party.
But the ruling party retained a majority of the seats -- 98 of 165.
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