VENEZUELA'S left-wing president, Hugo Chavez, has suffered a blow after his party lost several state and municipal races.
It failed in the election for mayor of Caracas and also lost in the oil-rich state of Zulia.
Mr Chavez won 17 out of 22 states on Sunday, thanks to victories in mainly rural states, but his opponents now control areas representing a third of the
country's 26 million people.
In Caracas, opposition leader Antonio Ledezma will replace Mr Chavez's outspoken ally, Juan Barreto, accused even by hard-line Chavistas of doing nothing to solve the city's rubbish crisis, crumbling infrastructure and soaring crime rate.
The Chavistas also lost the state of Miranda, where Diosdado Cabello, a close ally of the president and seen by many as his natural successor, was defeated by a rising opposition star, Henrique Capriles Radonski. "What's important is that the map of Venezuela has started to change," said the opposition leader, Manuel Rosales, who was soundly beaten by the president in the 2006 general elections.
Mr Chavez, however, called the elections a "great victory". "This ratifies the building of the historic project of Bolivarian socialism. Now we must deepen it, extend it," he said. "Who can say there is a dictatorship in Venezuela?" he added in televised comments in which he congratulated his opponents – a conciliatory tone which stood in contrast to the one used during the campaign, when he threatened to send tanks to states that fell to his opponents.
The president's optimism is not unfounded. He has only lost three more states than in the last elections four years ago and his Socialist Party has recovered five states that had fallen to the hands of dissidents since then.
None the less, Luis Lander, an electoral expert, said the results made Mr Chavez's decision to push for another referendum to allow him to run for re-election in 2012 – which voters rejected last year – harder than ever.
