He once drove a bus across the gritty streets of Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, and later rose through the ranks of the trade union movement.

Now Nicolas Maduro, Venezuela’s tall, broad-shouldered 50-year-old vice president, has been anointed as the possible successor to President Hugo Chavez, should the populist leader’s recurring cancer force him from power.

The president’s decision to name Maduro as his heir astonished the oil-rich country, where many view Chavez as a messiah-like leader with no equal after 14 years in power.

In a dramatic televised address Saturday, Chavez extolled Maduro as having the “heart of a man of the people.” With Maduro seated at his left, Chavez said he had proved his mettle by loyally serving the government for years, the past six as foreign minister, hopscotching the globe.

“He is a complete revolutionary, a man of great experience despite his youth, with great dedication and capacity for work, for leading, for handling the most difficult situations,” said Chavez, 58, a former lieutenant colonel who took office in 1999. “I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it.”

Chavez, who met Maduro in the 1980s when he led a clandestine group of rebellious army officers, had other options. His older brother, Adan, introduced him to radical politics. His former vice president, Elias Jaua, who rose up from university rabble-rouser, has been a fixture. Then there is National Assembly President Diosdado Cabello, a former military man and coup plotter whose name means “God-given hair.”

An old friend and associate of Maduro, Vladimir Villegas, said that choosing the vice president made the most sense.

“He is a leader who has credibility on the street, who comes from the union movement, who has been a diplomat, who brings together all the conditions,” said Villegas, a former deputy foreign minister who broke with the government in 2007. “I think it is a good decision by the president. This calms those who fear a military man who’s not Chavez.”

Venezuelans are accustomed to seeing a serious-sounding Maduro inaugurate infrastructure projects or make revolutionary pronouncements from foreign capitals. But Maduro can also get emotional about Chavez’s self-described revolution and his loyalty to the president.

“Chavez has a people at his side. He has us and he will have us always in this battle, from one victory to another!” Maduro, holding back tears, said Monday in an address in Venezuela. “Beyond this life we’ll be loyal to Hugo Chavez!”

Unlike several Chavez associates who served in the military, Maduro was in the Socialist League movement in the 1970s and traveled to Cuba for lessons in union organizing. After serving on the assembly that rewrote Venezuela’s constitution after Chavez took office, Maduro began his rise in government.