In December 1999, a year after he was elected Venezuela’s president, Hugo Chávez explained the source of his popularity in a televised interview. “I belong to that immense majority that is in a frank and open fight with some upper echelons, with a model that did not work, that failed and that made $200bn disappear from here.” Fast forward and many within the majority are today turning against the upper echelons of the socialist government — including a splinter chavista group blaming officials for misspending $259bn. On Sunday, Venezuelans will vote in a parliamentary election, which polls suggest the socialists are on course to lose. Mr Chávez bequeathed an economy on the ropes to his anointed successor, Nicolás Maduro, under whose leadership it has rapidly worsened as the price of oil has crashed. “They used to say that if I win the election capital was going to leave, that we were going to establish foreign exchange controls, that chaos was coming, that inflation was going to rocket to 100 per cent,” Mr Chávez said in that interview. All of this has since happened — and many, including chavistas, are fed up.