Is Chavez losing the referendum?

Venezuelanalysis.com estimates, 50,000 chavista students rallied for Chavez’ constitutional “reforms” last week;

Caracas, November 22, 2007 (venezuelanalysis.com) – In a massive demonstration that dwarfed violent opposition student protests two weeks ago against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s proposed constitutional reforms, more than 50,000 students marched in favor of the reforms in Caracas on Thursday. The rally on the ‘Day of the Students,’ also commemorated 50 years since the student uprising on October 21 1957 that culminated in the downfall of dictator Marcos Pérez Jiménez on 23 of January 1958.

Venezuelanalysis.com, however, is given to hyperbole when it comes to Venezuelan support for Chavez (notice the “violent opposition student protests” parroting the Chavez line that anti-chavistas were the cause of the violence). You’d be hardpressed to find much about the anti-chavistas in their columns, most of their columnists are hardcore US socialists.

Chavez used the occasion to deride those who oppose his proposed “reforms” traitors to Venezuela. (Breitbart)

President Hugo Chavez warned his supporters on Friday that anyone voting against his proposed constitutional changes would be a “traitor,” rallying his political base before a referendum that would let him seek unlimited re-election in 2012 and beyond.

Brandishing a little red book listing his desired 69 revisions to Venezuela’s charter, Chavez exhorted his backers to redouble their efforts toward a victorious “yes” vote in the Dec. 2 ballot.

“He who says he supports Chavez but votes ‘no’ is a traitor, a true traitor,” the president told an arena packed with red-clad supporters. “He’s against me, against the revolution and against the people.”

His speech followed the recent high-profile defection of his former Defense Minister Gen. Raul Baduel, a longtime ally who called the president’s proposed reforms a “coup.” Others have also broken with the Chavista movement in recent months, including politicians of the small left-leaning party Podemos

So I guess there’s no room to move around Chavez anymore. That’s why I think this particular rally was organized by Chavez. He seems to be losing ground in polls leading up to the vote. (Reuters)

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has lost his lead eight days before a referendum on ending his term limit, an independent pollster said on Saturday, in a swing in voter sentiment against the Cuba ally.

Forty-nine percent of likely voters oppose Chavez’s proposed raft of constitutional changes to expand his powers, compared with 39 percent in favor, a survey by respected pollster Datanalisis showed.

Just weeks ago, Chavez had a 10-point lead for his proposed changes in the OPEC nation that must be approved in a referendum, the polling company said.

Despite the swing, company head Luis Vicente Leon said he did not rule out a comeback by the popular president.

Chavez has trounced the opposition at the polls on average once a year and can deploy a huge state-backed machinery to get out the vote, Leon said.

Chavez is getting desperate. The Wall Street Journal reports he’s even lost the support of Stalin;

Ivan Stalin González, who prefers to be called just plain Stalin, is president of the student body at the Central University of Venezuela, or UCV, Venezuela’s biggest public university. During the past few weeks, Mr. González and other student leaders here have organized protest marches by tens of thousands of students opposed to a constitutional referendum set for Dec. 2. The proposed changes would dramatically expand Mr. Chávez’s power and allow him to seek perpetual re-election.

“Historically, students have represented the hope and conscience of Venezuela,” says Mr. González, who, unlike his bushy-moustached and sinister-mannered Soviet namesake, is scruffy-bearded and laid-back.

OK, maybe not THE Stalin, but a commie nonetheless;

The 27-year-old, sixth-year law student grew up in a poor household that dreamed of a Communist Venezuela. His father, a print-machine operator, was a high-ranking member of the Bandera Roja, or Red Flag, a hard-line Marxist-Leninist party that maintained a guerrilla force until as recently as the mid-1990s. Its members revered Josef Stalin as well as Albania’s xenophobic Enver Hoxha. As a boy, Mr. González remembers packing off to marches with his sisters, Dolores Engels and Ilyich, named in honor of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

As a young man, Mr. González burnished his leftist credentials, joining Marxist youth groups and following his father into the Bandera Roja. He traveled to Socialist youth conferences in Latin America.

Mr. González was still in his teens when Mr. Chávez was voted into office in late 1998. Even then, he says, he was skeptical about Mr. Chávez’s socialist rhetoric, as are many Venezuelan leftists. Mr. Chávez, a lieutenant colonel who had staged an unsuccessful coup attempt in 1992, would be more authoritarian than egalitarian, Mr. González reasoned.

He says his suspicions were confirmed when Mr. Chávez started forming the “Bolivarian Circles” of civilian supporters, some of which turned into armed gangs used to break up opposition gatherings. “Military men belong in the barracks,” he said.

Tomas Sancio (Venezuela Politics) and Daniel (Venezuela News and Views) both predict failure by Chavez in the referendum. Tomas asserts that because of the rising opposition, Chavez sends thugs to do his dirty work – shutting up the media. Daniel, however, does his best to convince Venezuelans to vote;

I do not know whether this serves to convince people to go to vote or not, but it seems to me that it makes a case that by going to vote NO, no matter how much cheating Chavez is already doing, we have a better chance to make our point that the new constitution is inviable. In fact we even have a chance to stop it! If we stay home we know that even with a 20% of Venezuelans Chavez will try to impose it anyway if he has enough spread, which he is sure to get if we stay home.

Besides, if you stay home you relinquish any right you have to say that your vote was stolen. It is that simple.

Francisco of the Caracas Chronicles explains why the chavistas have had such a hard time fighting off this new assault;

Where the old oppo played into the government’s hands by personalizing the debate, ceaselessly “Chaveztizing it”, the students center their message on civil rights. Whereas the old oppo never saw a red rag it didn’t want to charge, the student movement isn’t scared to step away from confrontations that can only play to the government’s advantage.

Gloriously, they’ve left Chávez without a credible target, without a reasonably demonizable enemy. His attempts to lump the kids in with the old guard are vaguely pathetic. It’s just not credible to slam people who hadn’t reached adolescence when Chávez first came to power as “widows of puntofijismo.” There’s palpable confusion as chavistas realize tried and tested polarization techniques have stopped working somehow.

The Devil’s Excrement has a linkfest to worldwide opposition to Chavez – finally. We’ve been sitting here waiting for the world to speak out – and it took an “Old Europe” king to get them to finally grow their own respective pair.

I should have known to check Kate’s blog first while researching, but she’s reprinted the entire WSJ “Stalin” article and another from the Miami Herald to profile the types of people (students) who join the pro-Democracy movement in Venezuela. Gaius at Blue Crab Boulevard and Michele Malkin are hopeful. Redstate writes that Chavez’ economics isn’t working too well either.

Chavez has eight days until the referendum – either way it goes, these are going to be turbulent days before, during and after the vote.

Just to leave you with a chuckle, one of Chavez’ mini-mes, Rafael Correa, President of Equador, had a hissy because TSA gave the little commie a hard time in Miami; (Associated Press)

In his weekly radio address, Correa said he accepted an apology issued Tuesday by U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador Linda Jewell, who said U.S. officials learned of his travel plans only hours before and “didn’t have time to make all the arrangements necessary to receive a head of state.”

Correa received “discourteous treatment” at Miami International Airport, where he’d stopped to change planes Nov. 15 on the way to a summit of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries summit in Saudi Arabia, the Foreign Ministry said in a letter to the U.S. Embassy in Quito last week. The letter gave no further details of his encounter.

“We accepted (the ambassador’s apology) but personally I’m not going to stop to change planes in the United States until they learn what civilization is,” Correa said.

What a blow to our economy – one less tinpot dictator stopping to buy Starbucks and a Snickers at the airport.

Category: Foreign Policy, Hugo Chavez