Word: referendums
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...approved the creation of permanent, legalized heroin centers aimed at helping hard-core addicts learn to function in society. Rather than wean users off the drug, the centers will provide them with carefully measured doses twice a day. Somewhat surprisingly, voters rejected the decriminalization of marijuana in the same referendum...
...Iraq. First spoken in hope, then inevitability, it is now uttered with a sense of urgency--and among some, alarm. Under the terms of the status-of-forces agreement ratified on Nov. 27 by the Iraqi parliament, U.S. troops must leave no later than the end of 2011; a referendum next summer could bring that deadline even closer. As the drawdown gathers speed, it will diminish the U.S.'s ability to influence Iraqi affairs. "Very soon, we will no longer have foreigners to blame for our problems--or to solve them," says Amar Fayyad, a political scientist at Baghdad University...
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...
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...
...also faces the very real risk of voter fatigue. If a referendum is held next year, it will be the third hard-fought election Venezuelans have been asked to engage in in as many years. Said opposition leader Manuel Rosales, the Maracaibo mayor-elect whom Chávez has recently threatened to imprison for allegedly plotting to assassinate him: "It's an insult to people that at this time we're already talking about a new electoral campaign, when they're overwhelmed by far more pressing problems." Maybe so, but Chávez "lives to be on the offensive," says...