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The Venezuelan people have spoken: In their presidential election of last Sunday, some 45 percent favored the center-left opposition challenger Henrique Capriles to incumbent Hugo Chavez, who secured 55 percent of the vote.

As a top leader of the opposition remarked, while the election may have been clean, it was not fair. Prominent political commentator Teodoro Petkoff editorialized in the Caracas daily paper Tal Cual: “To win [Chavez] had to launch unscrupulously the full weight of the state against Capriles. He made use of public funds and facilities and institutions of public administration in an obscenely opportunistic campaign.” The good news was that Chavez’s tactics fully united the opposition. The bad news is that they were unable to clinch the...