Word: ch
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Manuel Rosales, who captured the Maracaibo mayoral post amid threats by Chávez to have him arrested for allegedly plotting the President's assassination (a charge Chávez often hurls against his critics), said, "The map of Venezuela has started to change." Maybe. But Chávez and the opposition did make Venezuela seem a bit less angrily polarized. Caracas mayor-elect Antonio Ledezma reached out to work with Chavez - a gesture that would make any reported attempts by Chávez to cut off budget resources to opposition victors look petty...
...seems doubtful that Chávez, whose second and final six-year term ends in 2012, emerged with sufficient palanca, or leverage, to again seek a constitutional amendment that would allow him to be re-elected indefinitely, without risking a dangerous national uproar. Critics see his effort to nix term limits as a veiled bid for a Castro-style dictatorship - and even supporters suggest that with oil prices plummeting, battering an economy already hit hard by inflation, Chávez should set other priorities. What's more, now that the U.S. is about to replace Chávez's archenemy...
...Caracas, for example, Chávez has poured billions of dollars from his petro windfalls into admirable social projects for the long-neglected barrios. Yet those slums are reminders of his failure to stem plagues like violent crime (Caracas has about 40 murders a weekend), corruption and insufficient garbage collection. "It should make Chávez realize that instead of traveling the globe promoting socialism, he needs to address basic issues back home," says Chávez biographer Bart Jones, author of Hugo...
...same time, Chávez's feckless foes should realize that they're still weak enough for El Comandante to consider the constitutional issue a still viable option. Chávez, a former army paratrooper officer who led a failed coup attempt in 1992 before winning the presidency in the 1998 election (and a special race in 2000 under a rewritten constitution), has benefited greatly from a dysfunctional opposition led largely by leftovers from the old guard that pilfered Venezuela's oil wealth and left more than half the population in poverty; it thwarted Chávez last year only...
...while Chávez isn't set to loosen his heavy-handed control of Venezuela's legislature and judiciary - as witnessed by the scores of opposition candidates who, like López, were peremptorily disqualified from running - his acceptance of Sunday's results preserved his democratic bona fides. "Aside from his party winning big," says Jones, "he showed that the evil-dictator image is still overblown." After Sunday, it seems, Chávez can best keep things that way by turning ahead to problems that need to be tackled next year, instead of back to matters that voters already decided...