Word: referendum
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...have plummeted farther than a Lake Maracaibo oil drill. Both sides share the blame. But the 1999 phone call bears significance. If anything, Chávez has lately supplanted Castro as Washington's priority regional pariah, yet he celebrated a decade in power this month by winning a democratic referendum that scraps presidential term limits, allowing him to run for re-election for as long as he chooses to. (See pictures of people around the world watching Barack Obama's Inauguration...
...President Hugo Chávez first asked Venezuelans to eliminate presidential term limits in December 2007, they told him no. But on Sunday, as if resigned to the idea that he would keep on asking until he got the answer he wanted, voters said yes. Venezuela's second constitutional referendum in 14 months was approved by a resounding 54% to 45% margin, allowing Chávez to run for a third six-year term in 2012 and perhaps others after that...
...Across the Andes in Ecuador, a constitutional referendum last year gave leftist President Rafael Correa the chance to govern until 2017. Correa first won in 2006; Ecuador's new constitution allows him to run for a four-year term in a special election this year, and then another in 2013. Bolivia's leftist President, Evo Morales, who was elected in 2005, won a similar reform in a referendum last month. The question now is whether both leaders will eventually follow their ally Chavez's lead and seek the right to run for re-election indefinitely. Elsewhere, political watchers are waiting...
...base to the polls - but this time it was their supporters who didn't show up. The Sunday vote had a 32% abstention rate, and election watchers assume most of the no-show was on the opposition side. Much of that can simply be attributed to voter fatigue: the referendum was the third national election for Venezuelans since December...
...There has yet to be any reaction from the State Department but, before the vote, the State said simply that the referendum was an internal matter for the Venezuelans to decide upon. Despite declaring during his campaign last year that he'd be willing to meet with Chávez, U.S. President Barack Obama in a recent interview was critical of the Venezuelan and his stridently anti-U.S. stance. Washington will now watch to see if Chávez, who controls the western hemisphere's largest oil reserves, can retain his boisterous influence in the Americas - and survive politically...