Very Little Beauty Left In Irene Saez's Presidency Bid

CARACAS, Venezuela - Being a former Miss Universe was never enough for Irene Saez. She won acclaim as a mayor and got re-elected with a record 96 percent of the vote.

Then she set her sights higher, and for a long time it looked like the 6-foot-1 strawberry blonde might be Venezuela's first woman president.

But with the presidential election less than two weeks away, Saez's once soaring campaign is imploding. Sugary slogans, chaos among her staff and an alliance with a discredited political party have sent her plummeting from first place to fourth in polls.

Saez, 36, spent last week meeting with political leaders and other candidates to plot last-ditch strategies to defeat the new front-runner, former coup leader Hugo Chavez.

Many of the rank and file in the Social Christian COPEI party want to drop the 1981 Miss Universe and throw their support behind a coalition candidate to oppose Chavez in the Dec. 6 election race.

But Saez insists she's in the race until the end.

In a nation that calls itself the beauty-queen capital of the world, even fans of the Miss Venezuela pageant see Saez's campaign as a mess.

"Irene should have stayed as a beauty queen and never gotten involved in politics. She's very superficial and frivolous," said waitress Yusbely Peralta, 18.

A poll released last week by Caracas-based Datanalisis showed Saez had 2.4 percent support, a breathtaking drop from the 36 percent she enjoyed in March.

Chavez, 44, a former army paratrooper who tried to overthrow the government in 1992, now has 49 percent support.

In the past two decades, Venezuela has produced four Miss Universes, four Miss Worlds and two Miss Internationals - more than any other country.

Saez also drew support because of her success as mayor of the well-heeled Chacao municipality in Caracas. She cut crime, slashed budget deficits and spruced up public plazas.

She was seen as an honest and efficient politician. Her 1995 re-election was a landslide.

COPEI, one of Venezuela's two biggest parties, thought it could regain the presidency by backing her. Former president and COPEI leader Luis Herrera Campins courted her.

But the alliance was disastrous for Saez, whose support also was based on her independence from the discredited traditional parties.

More blunders followed. She came off to many as maudlin, speaking constantly of her love for "my people."

Saez's campaign team became a revolving door of advisers. She attracted some of the best talent in Venezuela. But many soon quit, fed up with Saez's lack of direction.