Word: referendums
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...panic set in around 7 p.m. Sunday evening, when the news arrived from inside Venezuela's National Election Commission (CNE), which is dominated by allies of President Hugo Chávez. Referendum returns indicated that Chávez's constitutional reforms, including the elimination of presidential term limits, would narrowly lose. Inside the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas, Chávez - who had yet to lose an election since winning the presidency in 1998 - was visibly upset. Still, according to government sources, he soon checked his anger and insisted the tally would turn his way before the CNE announced the results...
...streets, fearing fraud. Around midnight, Chávez's ex-defense minister, Raul Baduel, who opposed the reforms, warned that Chávez was flirting with popular unrest. By 1 a.m., says a government insider, Vice President Jorge Rodriguez - a respected former CNE director who had guided the transparent presidential recall referendum that Chávez defeated in 2004 - helped convince el comandante that conceding was "the only alternative left" and that he shouldn't wait any longer...
Chávez's calm concession did Venezuela, as well as democracy-challenged Latin America, a valuable service. And, whether he believes it or not, Venezuela did Chávez a favor as well by rebuffing the constitutional amendments that sought to expand and extend his already ample political power. The referendum loss should prod him to focus on the Venezuelan problems that need to be fixed before he leaves office in 2013, instead of the globe-trotting socialist and anti-U.S. crusades he hoped to pursue as President "until 2050," as he remarked last month. If so, he stands...
Latin American nationals and policy experts at Harvard said the results of Sunday’s referendum in Venezuela were encouraging for the opposition, but they remained skeptical about the country’s long-term democratic prospects. Sunday night marked the defeat of proposed constitutional amendments that would have granted socialist President Hugo Chavez greater control, including the constitutional power to remain president for life. This is the opposition’s first major electoral victory since Chavez came to power. Federico Andrés Ortega Sosa, a second-year student at the Kennedy School of Government from Caracas...
...were one of the very few sectors of society left that was not yet controlled by the government. On that occasion, young people staged their largest protests after the TV station had already gone off the air. But this time around, they hit the streets in advance of the referendum, leading tens of thousands to protest in Caracas and thousands more in other cities throughout the month of November...