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Venezuela's Chavez on brink of referendum defeat
Until he starts to really count the votes, and count, and count, and count....The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, looked to be losing his grip on power last night as exit polls showed him to be trailing the opposition by almost a million votes. The figures were early indications that, for the first time in the country's history, the President may have his term in office cut short by a referendum. The mid-morning results showed that the opposition, already boasting an enormous 1,758,000 votes to Chavez's 798,000, is well on its way to reaching the target of 3.76 million votes it needs to oust the authoritarian, left-wing President. Turn-out for the referendum was high, with millions of Venezuelans queuing from the early hours at polling stations all over the oil-rich country to decide the political fate of the firebrand Mr Chavez. SNIP And they kept the polls open very, very late. Posted by: Anonymous2u 2004-08-16 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=40742 |