Clash in Venezuela?

CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuelan opposition leader Henrique Capriles is set to announce he will run in elections to replace Hugo Chavez, setting up a make-or-break encounter against the dead president’s hand-picked successor, a close adviser to the candidate says.

“He will accept” the nomination, the adviser told The Associated Press. He spoke Sunday on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the decision publicly ahead of a formal announcement scheduled for later in the day.

Other opposition sources refused to comment, but a political consultant at ORC Consultores, which advises Capriles, also said he would run.

“He will put himself forward,” said Oswaldo Ramirez. “History is giving Capriles Radonski an important role.”

Venezuela’s election commission has set April 14 as the date of the vote, with formal campaigning to start just 12 days earlier. Ramirez said the 40-year-old opposition leader would demand that officials extend the campaign period by moving up the start date by more than a week, and that acting president Nicolas Maduro not be allowed to abuse state resources to boost his chances during the campaign.

Maduro has already announced his intention to run as the candidate of Chavez’s socialist party. On Sunday he picked up the support of Venezuela’s small communist party as well.

Capriles faced a stark choice in deciding whether to compete in the vote, which most analysts say he is sure to lose amid a frenzy of sympathy and mourning for the dead president.

Some say a second defeat for Capriles just six months after he lost last year’s presidential vote to Chavez could derail his political career. If he waits, a Chavista government led by Nicolas Maduro, the acting president, might prove inept and give him a better shot down the road. But staying on the sidelines also would have put his leadership of the opposition.

“If he says he doesn’t want to run I could totally understand that,” said David Smilde, an analyst with the U.S.-based think tank the Washington Office on Latin America.