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Chavez eyes support for re-election
Venezuela's president says half of the country's voters will back his bid to run for re-election while penciling in Feb. 15 as referendum date. Venezuela's constitution has already been changed once after Chavez came to power in 1998, to allow him to run for just one re-election. He won a new mandate in 2006. Now Chavez, whose present term ends in 2012, wants to change the wording of the Constitution from "the president may be re-elected only once" to simply "the president may be re-elected." "Two years ago (in the last presidential elections), 7.3 million voters voted for me. I don't expect any less than that. We are going towards 10 million (votes)," Hugo Chavez claimed in his weekly television broadcast on Sunday, according to AFP. Chavez said, "The referendum could be in February ... a date of February 15. It is already actually being evaluated technically (as a date)." But Chavez narrowly lost a referendum that included the same change last year and risks weakening his presidency if he is defeated again. The opposition calls Chavez a dictator-in-the-making, but the Cuba ally and declared Bush administration enemy says he needs the constitution changed to be able to stand for office again in 2012 and to deepen his socialist reforms. Posted by: Fred 2008-12-23 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=257938 |