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Walsh adds that Chávez also stands a better chance of winning a new term-limits referendum, which could take place as early as the middle of next year, precisely because he stands a better chance of galvanizing that base than he did last year. "A lot of Chavistas stayed home in 2007 because they knew no matter the outcome, Chávez would still be President the next morning," says Walsh. "This time, they'll feel more urgency, a more heightened sense that their political project is at risk. That will make it very close...
...Chávez remains ineligible to run in the 2012 election, his long-term socialist project will be at risk, mostly because he has few if any viable successors. In recent years he's had to fend off dissidents within his party and coalition, and as a result, he's been reluctant to promote anyone else to the national stage. The Chavista rebels complain that the theatrics of revolution have superseded the obligations of governing in Venezuela. That concern is a big reason why the PSUV lost last week in large urban centers like Caracas and Maracaibo. In those areas...
...Chávez's critics, of course, fear that if he's allowed indefinite re-election, he'll simply morph into another Fidel Castro. Despite - or because of - the Cuban leader's longevity in power (or the record of other would-be rulers-for-life), Latin Americans look askance at lifetime presidencies. That's why even voters next door in Colombia look set to deny their remarkably popular conservative President, Alvaro Uribe, a third term when his second expires in 2010. Chávez does have an authoritarian streak and is indeed a gushing admirer of Castro, and with...
Then again, Chávez is hardly a dictator. Venezuelans can still criticize him in the media, and ever since he was elected in 1998 (and in a special 2000 election and again in 2006), he's followed democratic procedure and conceded defeat, however irascibly, when it's come. Chávez's backers insist that even if term limits are eliminated, Venezuela's opposition, unlike Cuba's, can still dethrone...
Which means that if the opposition can't defeat Chávez in the coming referendum, it will have to figure out how to do it in 2012. Right now no one appears to be up to the task, largely because Chávez's foes spent so many years fecklessly plotting his overthrow by strikes and coups instead of ballots; they are still playing catch-up. Not that Chávez has always played fair: his government, for example, ruled that scores of opposition candidates were ineligible to run in last week's contests because of murky corruption charges...