Former First Lady to Stand Against Chávez

Confronting the US is challenge enough but Venezuela's President Hugo Chávez is now facing a new opponent: his ex-wife.

Marisabel Rodríguez, the former first lady, plans to run for mayor of Barquisimeto, the capital of Lara state, in November. "I want to change the face and way of doing politics in this city and this country," said the former PR executive on Sunday, confirming her candidacy for the Podemos party.

Chávez has suffered a series of reversals despite a surge of petrodollars into state coffers - inflation, sporadic food shortages and a revived opposition threaten to topple pro-government candidates.

In the past week, he has performed dramatic U-turns: rescinding a controversial intelligence law, which critics said was a move towards a police state, and urging Colombia's Farc guerrillas, whom he has saluted, to end their campaign.

Rodríguez's entry into politics will drag Chávez's messy divorce back into the limelight. A decade ago she was the blonde, articulate bride with a baby daughter, Rosinés, who softened the former soldier's image and helped propel him to power.

She briefly became an important and popular political figure but faded from view after the couple divorced in 2004.

Rodríguez is unlikely to become mayor but could become a prominent if idiosyncratic opposition figure, said Arturo Serrano, a political scientist at the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello in the capital, Caracas. "Marisabel doesn't hesitate to talk about Chávez on TV while holding their daughter, and that is the kind of tactic the opposition likes because to fight a media figure like Chávez you need to shock people in some way."