Chavez Referendum Defeated

Another update: It's breaking in the media.

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) - President Hugo Chavez suffered a stinging defeat in a vote on constitutional changes that would have let him run for re-election indefinitely, the chief of National Electoral Council said Monday.

Voters defeated the sweeping measures by a vote of 51 percent to 49 percent, Tibisay Lucena said.

Also reported here 51/49

1:20 AM

Fireworks in San Felipe. Chavez on cadena!!!

1:17

Tibisay Lucena head of the CNE has announced that the NO has won!!!!! Less than 2%!!

Comments

[scarshapedstar]

He's the Hitler Of South America!!!11 and he can't rig an election?

[IslamoLlama]

I'm still waiting to hear about how Chavez's defeat came at the hands of George Bush's brilliant foreign policy, or perhaps how Chavez would never have accrued this much power in the first place if it wasn't for the dastardly 110th Congress.

[scarshapedstar]

"Chavez would never have accrued this much power in the first place if it wasn't for the dastardly 110th Congress."

And they were just running interference for Bill Clinton's nefarious schemes!

[rwilymz]

Right.

It was the mechanations of the US and the CIA which propelled Chavez into power. ...and the proof of that theory?

Why, the fact that there's no *evidence* is the proof.

Because the US and the CIA are so ultra-clever that we/they can orchestrate a coup or a counter-coup [as the need may be] and leave nary a trace. And that lack-of-trace clinches it.

So what's it mean when the CIA stumbles and bumbles around the world like a two-legged gazelle, and leaving dinosaur-sized footprints? As in its Mid-East shenanigans? Well, obviously, that's a double-reverse-clever diversion to make those poor hicks in Venezuela, Cuba, NKorea [or whichever paranoid megalomaniac is currently talking to idiot US "journalists"] believe that we didn't really orchestrate the popular Venezuelan counter-coup in '02 in which Hugo was ***thisclose*** to boarding the palne for exile in Cuba.

But Chavez [not to mention Li'l Kim, and Castro, and Ahmadinejad] is too clever by half himself, and he doesn't fall for the "complete lack of evidence" thing. He's not fooled, nosireebob!!

And congrats to you two guys as well, for seeing right through it all. And all you needed was for the prescription to Haldol to go unfilled!

[SDN]

I suspect Instapundit was right this morning, and Chavez will just pull an EU and keep holding the vote until it goes thru (with some of his opposition disappeared in the meantime).

[rwilymz]

That's how school boards in this country historically get tax and bond issues passed.

If it fails, you have to wait two years.

[scarshapedstar]

"I suspect Instapundit was right this morning, and Chavez will just pull an EU and keep holding the vote until it goes thru"

Er... shouldn't that be called pulling a GOP? Oh, right, Tom Delay is sooooooooooo ancient history!