The drive to recall Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez is advancing but faces many problems.

BY FRANCES ROBLES

CARACAS - It's 5 p.m. and Enrique Mendoza, the governor of Venezuela's state of Miranda, has been up since 3 a.m.

Mendoza has had back-to-back meetings since he rose, is running hours behind and looks disheveled and about to collapse. But he's got a campaign to fight: recall President Hugo Chávez.

''Thirty days after we beat the president we have to mount a government of national unity,'' he said with a sigh that hinted at his exhaustion. ``It's not going to be easy but it's not impossible.''

Six weeks before Venezuelans are scheduled to vote on a recall referendum against Chávez, the opposition coalition of labor unions, business owners, political parties, oil workers and independent citizens' groups are desperately trying to prepare a platform that convinces voters to oust the leftist populist Chávez.

Mendoza said the message will be that crime and unemployment have soared and investors have fled under Chávez's six years in power. The opposition will also reassure the nation's poor majority that Chávez's replacement will tend to their needs, even though Chávez portrays himself as a champion of the poor and his critics as rich business owners.

But as the Aug. 15 referendum approaches, the opposition -- known by the name of the umbrella group that Mendoza heads, the Democratic Coordinator -- has yet to spell out what proposals it offers that Chávez does not.

While eager to portray itself as a democratic solution to a left-wing autocrat, the opposition has failed to come up with an effective campaign message, experts say.

No opposition posters have been put up on Caracas streets. Television is not drowning in ads. And the opposition repeatedly postponed the launch of its proposed government program should it beat Chávez. The campaign was officially launched Saturday.

WHAT'S THE STRATEGY?

''Strategy? That's the big question,'' said Armando Durán, a political analyst who opposes Chávez. ``It worries me. There doesn't seem to be a campaign. I'd be on the street 24 hours a day. You don't see them on the street. This lack of action is a mystery to me.''

Ask organizers if there's a single message, and they cite a dozen.

'Our message is not just `Get Chávez out,' but that we must reconstruct Venezuela, which is falling to pieces,'' said Nelson Lara, opposition strategy committee leader. ``We have to recover the balance of [government] powers, the economy, bring back the investor . . . That's what it's about.''

Lara said door-to-door campaigning will start soon to persuade undecided voters that the opposition is a real alternative to Chávez.

Critics were convinced the delays in the opposition's launch of its campaign were because of political infighting between myriad factions that share only one thing: hatred for Chávez.

''Every day they break up more,'' said Rafael Uzcategui, secretary general of the pro-Chávez Nation for All Party. ``They are a very diverse alliance from so many different sectors that they'll implode, whether they win or lose.''

The effort to oust the president in a recall referendum picked up steam after a coup in 2002 and a nationwide strike launched later that year failed to dislodge Chávez, accused by his critics of trying to impose a Cuba-like regime on this oil-rich nation.

Chávez appears to have a head start in the recall vote campaign, having spent billions of dollars on social welfare programs that critics see as a desperate attempt to buy the votes of the poor. He has deployed ''missions'' to teach Venezuelans to read and help them graduate from high school, and established scores of free healthcare clinics with Cuban doctors in poor areas.

But Mendoza said the opposition's long and bitterly fought campaign to force a recall referendum by collecting more than 2.45 million signatures served to its advantage, because now it has a clear sense of where supporters are. About 3.7 million ''yes'' votes are needed to force Chávez out of office.

Opposition leaders claim that more than 500,000 volunteers around the nation have agreed to help with everything from strategizing to logistics to exit polling on Aug. 15. About 8,500 voting centers have been designated.

Separate structures have been established for tasks such as communications and voter information. There's even a committee trying to figure out how to select an opposition candidate or candidates for new presidential elections 30 days after the recall vote, should Chávez lose.

Mendoza is expected to run, but he declines for now to say whether he's interested.

''Until August 15, we'll have one candidate with a first name and last name: Recall Referendum,'' Mendoza said.

WHAT THE POLLS SAY

Although Chávez's supporters say he is sure to win, various polls indicate the opposition could win 60 percent to 70 percent of the vote. But the polls also show Chávez's support slowly rising over the past months, an increase widely attributed to his social welfare spending.

''Chávez is getting a head start on his campaign,'' said Washington pollster Mark Feierstein. ``Once the opposition campaign gets in gear . . . I think that's going to change.''

A June poll conducted by Feierstein's firm, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, for the anti-Chávez RCTV television station showed Chávez with a lead if 100 percent of the voters turn out, but a four-percentage-point loss among ``likely voters.''

The poll was particularly significant because it was the first time a poll commissioned by the opposition showed Chávez possibly winning.

''The majority of Venezuelans know that with Chávez in power, a solution will not be had,'' said Juan Fernández, an opposition leader.

''We have to recognize he has a percentage of support,'' he said. ``But we will also convince people: we are an option.''