By TIM JOHNSON
             Herald Staff Writer

             BOGOTA, Colombia -- Lt. Col. Hugo Chavez, a former army coup leader and
             leading presidential candidate, has promised a political earthquake for Venezuela.

             Last weekend, he began to deliver.

             Chavez and his populist Patriotic Pole coalition tallied huge gains in legislative and
             local elections Sunday, seizing the largest bloc of seats in both houses of Congress
             and becoming the biggest political force in Venezuela.

             The electoral triumph boosts Chavez's chances in Dec. 6 presidential voting,
             observers said.

             ``This helps Chavez tremendously,'' Ricardo Penfold, an analyst with Asesora
             Santander, told the Bloomberg news service. ``Chavez showed he has a much
             stronger organization that we expected.''

             Chavez himself declared his presidential campaign unstoppable.

             ``The first social and political force in Venezuela -- the Venezuela of the end of the
             century and the beginning of the next century -- is that which we represent,'' he
             said in a television interview.

             Candidates from Chavez's Patriotic Pole won seven of 23 governorships, beaten
             only by the eight governorships won by the center-left Democratic Action party,
             traditionally the nation's strongest party, according to results from the National
             Electoral Council.

             Two years in jail

             A 44-year-old former army paratroop commander, Chavez led an unsuccessful
             coup against then-President Carlos Andres Perez in February 1992. After two
             years in jail, he emerged to ride a wave of public anger against traditional
             politicians.

             Chavez has vowed to turn Venezuela's political system on its head. If elected
             president, Chavez promises to dissolve Congress and install an assembly to write a
             new constitution and deeply reform the state.

             Critics say he is authoritarian and unpredictable, and financial markets reacted to
             the vote with jitters. The Caracas Stock Exchange's general index fell 3.2 percent.

             With 67 percent of Sunday's vote tallied, the National Electoral Council said
             Chavez's coalition won 34 percent of the congressional seats. The center-left
             Democratic Action Party won about 22 percent, and the center-right Copei Party
             won 11 percent.

             Those two parties have governed Venezuela without interruption for four decades
             since the nation returned to democracy in 1958.

             The pro-business Venezuela Project alliance headed by candidate Henrique Salas
             Romer, a Yale-educated former state governor who slightly trails Chavez in the
             polls, emerged with about 12 percent of the vote.

             In the western state of Zulia, center of the nation's oil industry and considered a
             bellwether for the rest of the country, Chavez supporter Francisco Arias Cardenas
             skated to re-election for governor. Arias Cardenas was one of the army officers
             who helped lead Chavez's 1992 coup attempt.

             Father leads race

             Chavez's father, Hugo de los Reyes Chavez, was leading in the race for governor
             in the western state of Barinas, preliminary results showed.

             Copei, the social Christian party, saw its gubernatorial candidates win re-election
             in the states of Miranda, Delta Amacuro, Falcon and Nueva Esparta.

             Copei's presidential candidate, former beauty queen and Chacao Mayor Irene
             Saez, appeared undismayed by Copei's showing despite her own lagging in the
             polls. She trails far behind Chavez and Salas Romer.

             ``We are beginning the national change, defending freedom, democracy, social
             peace and the security of all Venezuelans,'' she said, confident of a December
             victory.

             Her allusion was to fears that a Chavez presidency may bring violence to
             Venezuela. Indeed, politics in Venezuela has increasingly held elements of class
             warfare, as poor Venezuelans flock to Chavez's side and those with more
             resources flail about for a strategy to derail his candidacy.

             Herald wire services were used in compiling this report.
 

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