¡NO!
By Brandozilla Posted in Breaking News — Comments (28) / Email this page » / Leave a comment »
Promoted by Ben. More here. Is that freedom rock? Turn it up, man.
Hugo Chavez has conceded defeat. His constitutional proposals have failed.
CNN has it here.
About 51 percent of voters opposed the amendments, while approximately 49 percent were in favor of them.
"Don't feel sad. Don't feel burdened," Chavez told supporters immediately after the results were announced.
More than nine million of Venezuela's 16 million eligible voters went to the polls Sunday.
President of the National Electoral Council, Tibisay Lucena, said the process "shows the entire world that we are a democratic country."
Chavez, in what he called a talk "from my heart" acknowledging the results, thanked those who opposed his proposal, saying the election had proven that Venezuelan democracy is maturing.
Thousands of people gathered in the streets, many of them university students who worked to defeat the measure, burst into singing their country's national anthem upon hearing the news.
This is a great day for the people of Venezuela!
My cynical take is that he decided it would be best to lose on the referendum and back door everything in later.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
is that his elections aren't valid. If he has one that goes against him, it casts doubt that he is rigging them. If the election is billed as important but doesn't actually matter so much the better.
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"Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it."
-Thomas Paine: The American Crisis, No. 4, 1777
Good on the Venezuelan people for standing up to him.
I truly hope he honors the vote, but one gets the feeling this won't be his last push of this sort.
Walk on, walk on, with hope in your heart. And you'll never walk alone. You'll never walk alone.
Having predicted multiple times that Chavez would narrowly win this one on low turnout, I'm delighted to eat my words, and crow has never tasted so good!
Congratulations to the people of Venezuela for reversing a terrible slide toward an abyss of anti-freedom.
And thank you God for bringing the world a sliver of hope and sanity.
Voters rejected the sweeping measures Sunday by a vote of 51 percent to 49 percent, said Tibisay Lucena, chief of the National Electoral Council. She said that with 88 percent of the votes counted, the trend was irreversible.
Somehow, in America, we wouldn't call a vote this close "irreversible" with 12% of the ballot boxes still out. A quick Google of Ms. Lucina brings up the blog "Venezuela News and Views" - Ms. Lucina is inexorably tied to Chavez is the claim.
"Tibisay Lucena is just a symbol, a mouthpiece that is surely handsomely paid."
http://daniel-venezuela.blogspot.com/2006/04/new-cne-same-old-same-old.h...
I'm not sure what all this means, but it still looks sketchy to me. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad this referendum was rejected, but is it possible that Chavez has yet more cards to play? Is there a scenario in which he would want this referendum to go down?
I get the feeling that despite massive electoral fraud, Venuzuelans voted "No" in large enough numbers that even Chavez didn't try to go through with a stolen referendum.
I figured Jimmy Carter would be there to certify that Chavez's stolen win was legit, but perhaps he was too busy doing that for Putin.
I'm waiting for another shoe to drop, like in South Dakota when Tim Johnson won with about 2500 votes arriving two days after the election from Pine Ridge Reservation with 99% for Johnson, if I recall correctly----pushing him from defeat to victory.
Not that, but something to suddenly switch No to Si.
Otherwise, it's almost too good to be true.
However, the Chief Poisoner Tsarevitch won over in the once [and future?] USSR.
He will just take a cue from some demagogues here in the USA. he can run a crony and control him like a puppet. Or, if the law allows him to run in a later non consecutive term. He can throw his party apparatus behind a total incompetent, then ride in on a white horse to save the nation.
"Nothing works like freedom, Nothing succeeds like liberty"
Kyle
Vlade Putin seems to think there's a big difference between being in power and out of power though, hence his desire to be Prime Minister. I do fully expect to see laws rewritten to shift all that Presidential power that Yeltsin and Putin acculmulated, and shift it to the Duma and its Prime Minister.
But as for Chavez, his trickery has been denied for now. Let's be happy at least for a moment, heh.
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Diplomacy is the art of saying 'Nice doggie' until you can find a rock.
"a man's admiration for absolute government is proportinate to the contempt he feels for those around him". Tocqueville
Chavez isn't done yet. At least I don't think so. He hasn't let anything like a pesky election result get in his way yet. When I was working down there during the first recall referendum, back in 2003, a friend of mine observed that every time there was a protest, the opposition showed up with rocks and sticks and the Chavistas showed up with guns.
That basic fact hasn't changed. Chavez may not try main force, though I wouldn't put it past him, but he won't willingly step down. Something will happen between now and the end of his term. There will be some kind of "emergency" spring up that will require him to stay in power. It's almost a sure thing, and it's right out of "The Tin-Pot Dictators Handbook."
...legitimacy which Chavez sought is for now denied to him. It places a black mark, however good it may be, on his track record, and I'm sure he doesn't want like that happening at all. Perhaps forever he will be considered as not a savior, but a dictator, simply because of this latest referendum rejecting his rule and political agenda.
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Daniel 2:20 And he [God] changeth the times and seasons: he removeth kings, and setteth up kings: he giveth wisdom unto the wise, and knowledge to them that know understanding.
Chavez is still president for 5 more years. Let's not open the champagne just yet. And he's still incredibly popular in Venezuela except for a few former bosses and some CIA contractors. It cannot be said that Hugo forced his way to power. He was chosen in an election more transparent than any Cook County balloting. We've got bigger problems in Central and South America than this one leader: the hundreds of millions of hungry mouths that he represents. And with our record of being cozy with some for-real dictators down there, it's not like they're looking at us as a role-model.
And meanwhile, Ol' Pooty in Russia just got almost all the powers and more that Chavez was looking for.
They say things run in threes. Pakistan started the ball rolling, but I doubt Pervez will stay in power long enough to get friendly with the next US President.
It wasn't a great weekend for liberty on this planet.
I wouldn't go so far as to say "incredibly popular." He has been popular with the Communistas as well as the destitute, which is unfortunately a fairly large voting bloc in Venezuela. As far as those with jobs and/or educations, not so much.
Just because Jimmy Carter said so doesn't mean that ole Hugo has been keeping to the straight and narrow during previous votes.
As far as our "record of being cozy with some for-real dictators down there", if its going to be a dictator, then better the dictator in your pocket than the dictator in someone else's pocket. We always seem to forget that freedom isn't automatic. You can't just declare it and expect it to happen. There has to be a structure in place to sustain it or you end up with anarchy or backsliding into totalitarianism.
Right.
Envisioning when all that is Left is the Right.
If Chavez didn't want to win this he wouldn't have tried so hard to get it.
This is a sign that the country isn't under his total control, which is wonderful news no matter how hard you try to find the negatives.
But I also worry about the upcoming crackdown. If he can't win elections using the US Democrat Party platform, then he'll go to plan "b".
I don't believe for a second that Chavez will shrug his shoulders, retire, and go fishing.
It depends on what is more important to him, dictatorial powers or the admiration of the UN. Since he gets off on snuggling up to Cuba and Iran, I'm guessing he doesn't really care what world opinion is.
Why do you think he's investing so much money in his military? Those guns aren't for protecting Venezuela from the US, they're there to protect Hugo Chavez from his own people.
I think he deliberately threw this one. That he let the people actually make the decisions for once instead of forcing it through like he has almost everything else.
See, I don't see Chavez as entirely stupid. He could see the writing on the wall in how the rest of the world viewed him. In fact, his comments about "This proves we are still a functioning democracy" are why I think this.
Give him 2 years, he'll have all of these "reforms" signed into law by then...
"Hillary is a blonde. But what she's got is a testicle lockbox."
-Rush Limbaugh
At about 1:14 when I clicked the link it said "update 1 minute ago."
I'm totally floored. Totally floored. This was in the bag according to almost everybody just a few hours ago.
If true, I personally am proud of the Venezuelans who were willing to put it on the line to stop this.