Keep your fingers crossed. Caracas Chronicles;
Quico says: Multiple sources inside CNE now confirm it. Chávez’s constitutional reform proposal has been defeated at the polls. An official announcement is imminent.
Live blogged at Venezuela News and Views, plus extensive coverage at the Miami Herald.
Update: Chavez has conceded;
The changes would have created new forms of communal property, let Chavez handpick local leaders under a redrawn political map, permit civil liberties to be suspended under extended states of emergency and allow Chavez to seek re-election indefinitely. Now, Chavez will be barred from running again in 2012.
Other changes would have shortened the workday from eight hours to six, created a social security fund for millions of informal laborers and promoted communal councils where residents decide how to spend government funds. The reforms also would have granted Chavez control over the Central Bank and extended presidential terms from six to seven years.
Please God, lt it be true….not like Chavez will accept the results anyways…but it does give hope…
Thugs don’t concede elections, I’ll be stunned if Chavez doesn’t make this a victory for himself, at gun point of course. Where’s weasely Jimmy Carter to assist again that happening?
Putin won his sham election. The Russian sheeple deserve him, like zoo animals horrified that capitivity ended, they can continue to eat cheap and keep their 600 sq ft apartment subsidies without risk.
Chavez isn’t leaving unless it is under a hail of gunfire. Or Putin, fat chance, for that matter.
With Chavez in complete control of the election process, the media and the military, I’m pretty sceptical about this report. If its true and el Lider actually accepts the results it will show a side of him that I never would have expected.
reading through the commentary at Caracas Chronicles, Daniel’s site and others, the thinking seems to be that Hugo really will not accept a defeat with this.
Jimmy Carter and others weren’t invited this time… 56% of the paper votes will be audited by both sides… so, there’s some hope.
and the announcement from moments ago,
50.70 % No in the first block
51.05 % No in the second block
Hugo’s going to speak now.. I can’t stand it.
It’s made the Drudge Report.
From Brietbart: “Chavez Loses Constitutional Vote.”
Wow. That’s big!!
From IHT:
The commission said 50.7 percent voted against the referendum and 49.3 percent voted in favor. The results were all the more surprising given that Chavez and his supporters control nearly all the levers of power.
Agreed; and part of the explanation might be found here: Why I Parted Ways With Chavez, by the former commander in chief of the Venezuelan army and associate of Chavez.
But Chavez isn’t the guy to let a close loss go by uncontested, not with his own future and that of his socialist autocracy at stake, and you can bet there will be more to come.
Like Iran, Chavez is suffering economy problems.
Could it be the spend, spend, spend, while gasoline sells for 4 cents a litre or 16 cents a gallon?
You would think 10 cents tax per gallon could help with the economy. Guess cheap gas buys voter loyalty and he can not afford to lose that support. = TG
he will just continue chipping away at freedom as all good socialists do.
” Voters defeated the sweeping measures by a vote of 51 percent to 49 percent”
Awww …he won’t make the mistake of referendum again…can’t be a dictator if you let people vote you out of office.
Just scrap the constitution it keeps getting in the way of Marxist utopia anyway.
Thugo is in there until 2012. Lots of time to have another referendum on the issue. In fact he may have “never-endums” until he gets the results he wants.
It won’t stop him. The vote was merely legitimizing decoration. Like dangerous lefties everywhere, he is convinced of the morale superiority of his position, and for such, he is entitled to power.
He’ll find a way. He wants it too much.
“Thugo is in there until 2012. Lots of time to have another referendum on the issue.”
True a-Bob…and next time he’ll be sure the dissenting voters are not there to vote 😉
I think there is a lesson to be learned in Chavez’s defeat versus Putin’s victory. In Venezuela the Catholic church stood with the opposition. When you consider that Chavez like Putin had the airwaves to himself, you have to give credit to the power of the pulpit. In Russia the pathetic survivors of the Russian Orthodox church have taken the strategy of becoming Putin lackeys.
When lefties applaud the destruction of Christianity in the west, they really need to think again if that’s a good thing. Russians have no organized entity of moral authority like Venezuelans to act as a counter-balance to the bad intentions of the state.
look democracy works…who would have thought….
quoting Shaken “It won’t stop him. The vote was merely legitimizing decoration. Like dangerous lefties everywhere, he is convinced of the morale superiority of his position, and for such, he is entitled to power.”
geez, sounds like the process surrounding the illegal invasion of Iraq to a tee, just replace “leftists” with conservative or alike.
Haha, there it is:
A lefty brings up Bush.
Do you have any other tricks, Sean S, or is that it?
Chavez has one goal – dictatorship. The fact that the people voted against it, will be minor stumbling block to him. He’ll achieve that dictatorship anyway.
There’s another stumbling block and that’s the economy. He has allowed the country to move into an economy similar to that of the ME – dependent on one commodity. Oil. He is able to purchase the votes of the impoverished class, not by developing an economic infrastructure for them, within an economy in which they have a contributing role. No, he doesn’t spend the oil revenues on that. He simply, using oil revenues, funds them. Free education, housing, medical. Cheap gasoline etc.
BUT – he’s only got one economy. Oil. And, like the ME, for example, he’s dependent on a foreign infrastructure to get the revenues from that oil. Saudi Arabia requires foreign technology and engineers to extract its oil. Saddam Hussein, the same. Both did the same – bought out the lower class by giving them money from revenues, not by building up an economic infrastructure that included them.
Who provides the capital for Venezuala’s oil? The USA. It alone has the technology to extract the oil from the low quality crude oil in Venzuala. So, heh, Venezuala sells most of its oil to the US, for a reason.
The problem of nations that move into a dependency on one resource, and, instead of develooping an inclusive economic infrastructure, use the revenues to buy out their lowest class – it’s a serious problem. It enables dictators and a corrupt upper class.
Compare Mexico and what it has done with its lowest class. It ships them off to the US as illegal aliens, rather than itself developing an economic infrastructure to include them.
Sean s- an ignorant comment on your part. The invasion of Iraq was a democratic vote of the US Congress – and – was carried out by a coalition of many countries. Entirely legal. Or are you one of the witless who thinks that the only ‘legal wars’ are those named by that corrupt UN? The UN, saviour of genocides in Rwanda and Darfur! the UN – oil for fraud, Kyotoism! The UN – help for the tsunami (the help consisted of rhetoric and debates). I suggest that you stick to facts rather than biased opinion.
CTV News reporting on this last night was not surprisingly short on details but managed to get in a description of Chavez as being “colourful” and “controversial” …. you know in that most interesting and jovial sort of way …. like how he was so cute at the UN calling The President of the US — SATAN!
I think WL Mackenzie is right, Thugo wil give it another go, and another after that, if necessary — He only needs to win once — losses don’t matter. I also expect that next time he will be beter prepared to make sure all votes are “counted properly”.
Did I say Bush? nope…but somehow you concluded that is who I was referring to, so we must have been on the same wavelength with my connection of Shaken’s comment to Iraq..thanks for the support Yukon.
Somewhere Sean Penn weeps uncontrollably .
Sean….implying but not actually saying his name,oh your just so clever,your gonna pull a bicep patting your back like that.
sub your with you are,too many beer with the Canucks loss last night.
“illegal invasion of Iraq”
Illegal?
How was that so, Sean, when the overwhelming majority in both houses of Congress, Hillary Clinton included voted to invade Iraq?
You really need to check Google or wikipedia before you open your mouth.
Chavez in all likelihood will try to match or better Castro’s record of longevity in office. Oh well, one can always hold out hope that global warming will simply reduce Chavez to a grease spot on the pavement by 2012.
Hey Penny, in saying the invasion was illegal he’s referring to a concept known as “international law” where the invasion was in fact illegal. If you don’t recognize international law, like the majority of the civilized world, then your perspective may differ. You obviously don’t.
Oh and please, do not advocate wikipedia. Actually the fact that you mention that says a lot. Make wikipedia the last place you check. Christ, it’s edited by anyone and everyone, hardly peer reviewed scholarly work. Academic journals reign supreme. It’s a shame that you have to be a student or faculty member to access most of them. Maybe we could have more enlightened debate if they were more easily accessible. But even then, lots of good works are open to the public.
Also, try and avoid most modern political philosophers like Ayn Rand (a joke in most academic circles) who communicate their politics in fictional stories. Stories have plot lines and acts that rely on emotional stimuli to make them interesting. They are quite detached from the way reality functions. I can’t count how many Americans of the lower income, less educated strata, that I’ve seen taken in by her fairy tales.
Stay on topic, please.