CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - Rafael Caldera is leaving behind an
                   economy in chaos and a political landscape shrouded in uncertainty, but
                   the 83-year-old outgoing president is convinced he did right by Venezuela.

                   ''We fulfilled our mission. We solved the puzzle and delivered the country
                   in peace and democracy,'' he said in his final speech to Congress last
                   week.

                   With well over half the population mired in poverty, a million people
                   unemployed and corruption rampant, Caldera's critics say his presidency
                   was a failure - that he laid the groundwork for a former coup leader with
                   questionable credentials to succeed him as president.

                   Former Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez, 44, was inaugurated on Tuesday. He won
                   a landslide victory in December largely by capitalizing on Venezuelans'
                   anger over declining living standards.

                   ''Chavez is an absolute son of Caldera,'' two-time former president Carlos
                   Andres Perez, whom Chavez tried to overthrow seven years ago, told The
                   Associated Press. ''A frustrated and defrauded people living in this
                   situation isn't looking for a president, but an avenger.''

                   Caldera's defenders point out that he came to power in 1994 in times of
                   great turmoil - riots, coup attempts, the collapse of the banking system, the
                   impeachment of then-president Perez. His greatest achievement, they say,
                   was returning a modicum of stability to a nation in disarray.

                   Yet even his staunchest supporters recognize that many of his goals -
                   reforming education, trimming a grossly bloated bureaucracy, privatizing
                   aluminum and electrical companies - went unmet.

                   ''Caldera planted, others will harvest,'' said outgoing Information Minister
                   Fernando Egana. ''He laid the bases for great economic, social and
                   political transformations and now others must consolidate these reforms so
                   that we can see the benefits.''

                   Venezuelans are debating whether history will see Caldera, a founder of
                   Venezuela's four-decade-old democracy, as an experienced elder
                   statesman or a mere caretaker leader helplessly overseeing the demise of
                   the political establishment he helped create.

                   For now at least, proponents of the latter argument are carrying the day.

                   Caldera was also president from 1969 to 1974. A constitutional scholar
                   with a doctorate in political science, he was catapulted to the presidency
                   for a second time largely because of Chavez's attempted coup in 1992.

                   When he assumed power two years later, Caldera released Chavez from
                   prison, hoping to heal the wounds from the coup attempts.

                   Chavez's ''presence on the electoral scene was a product of this legal
                   violation by Caldera, who did not carry through with the trial against the
                   coupster,'' said former president Perez, now a federal senator who plans
                   to oppose the Chavez administration.