CARACAS -- Turn out the lights, shorten the shower to three minutes, buy a portable generator.

That is President Hugo Chávez's message to the citizens of energy-rich Venezuela, where the ``socialist revolution'' has brought power cuts, water shortages and collapsing public services.

In the past month, thousands of Venezuelans have taken to the streets to protest the lack of basic social services, from electricity to water. On Thursday, about 100 demonstrators turned out in Caracas calling for Chávez to solve the problem.

Some burned electricity bills while others simulated plugging electric devices into candles.

``We're accused of wasting electricity, but the fact is the government didn't plan, didn't invest and didn't carry out maintenance,'' Aixa Lopez, president of the Committee of Blackout Victims, told the TV news channel Globovisión.

For more than a decade, Chávez has dominated Venezuelan politics, establishing a grip on power unequalled in the region, outside of Cuba. But lower oil prices, as well as the effects of economic mismanagement and neglected infrastructure, have begun to erode his popular support. A weak and divided opposition seems poorly placed to take advantage of the opportunity.

Late last year, Chávez mocked critics who warned that Venezuela, more than 90 percent dependent on oil revenues for its foreign earnings, was poorly positioned to ride out the global crisis. The country's economy, he said, was ``bulletproof.''

But after more than four years of rapid growth, Venezuela is now firmly in recession. Worse still, its shrinking economy has done little to blunt inflation, which is running at close to 30 percent a year -- around three times the regional average. And the economic downturn is having a predictable effect on the government's popularity, just as it gears up to fight crucial legislative elections next year.

The latest data from polling company Datanálisis shows voters evenly split, for the first time since mid-2004, over whether the president has been good or bad for ``national wellbeing.'' Only 17.2 percent say they would vote for him if the presidential election were imminent -- down from over 31 percent in September.

``I don't have much time for opinion polls,'' said pro-Chávez legislator Luis Tascón. But he admits that the president's political movement, ``has, in effect, suffered a decline'' since its high-water mark in 2006 when Chávez was reelected.

``It's a worrying picture for chavismo,'' Tascón told The Miami Herald, ``but it's not fatal.''

The government's great advantage, he argues, ``is an incoherent opposition, without leadership and without a platform.'' Even so, power cuts, he says, ``will undoubtedly have a political cost'' for the government.

In early 2007, after winning re-election, Chávez decreed the nationalization of those parts of the electricity industry still in private hands -- notably the Caracas power company EDC. Since then, there have been seven national power outages. In most parts of the country, weary consumers have grown used to frequent, unscheduled blackouts lasting hours.

This month, the president admitted there was a crisis in both the power and water industries. This came on the heels of a similar admission regarding healthcare. He put the blame mainly on the El Niño phenomenon for producing drought -- Venezuela is 70 percent dependent on hydro power for its electricity -- and on consumers for their wasteful habits.

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