Venezuela's President, Hugo Chávez can be grateful to the "blatant gerrymandering of congressional districts" for the number of government deputies in the National Assembly his ruling party won in legislative elections held on Sunday, said The Washington Post in an editorial published on Friday.

According to the Post editorial, President Chávez, "turned the Congress election into a referendum on himself; he inundated the country with propaganda via the state-controlled media and even refilled government food stores," Efe reported.

"But the result was an unmistakable rebuff," the editorial said. "In a normal democratic country, that outcome would have produced something close to a tie between government and non-government deputies in the congress."

"Instead, thanks to the blatant gerrymandering he ordered, Chávez probably will have 98 seats, compared with 67 for the main opposition coalition and a small leftist party," the editorialist wrote.

"There was good reason for Chávez's loss: Alone in Latin America, Venezuela is still deep in recession, and it leads the hemisphere in inflation and violent crime," said the US newspaper.