Thousands March To Demand A Limit To Presidential Power

Tens of thousands of Venezuelans poured on to the streets of Caracas before a referendum tomorrow that would grant Hugo Chávez sweeping new powers to impose his vision of a socialist Venezuela.

The opposing passions on the streets of the capital highlighted the deep divisions in the country over Mr Chávez’s proposals to extend his powers and allow him to stand for reelection indefinitely. The “Chavistas” were bused in from slum areas to hear the President make his last-ditch call for support for his radical rewrite of the Constitution, his second in office. Opponents of the constitutional change had marched the day before.

The overhaul would abolish presidential term limits, institute media censorship in times of “emergency” and introduce some forms of communal property. Polls show the vote on a knife edge, with voters evenly divided between the “yes” and “no” camps.

Even among the nation’s poor, who often revere him, there is scepticism of Mr Chávez’s latest reforms. More than 100,000 protesters took to the streets of the capital on Thursday to call on Venezuelans to vote “no”.

“Why don’t you shut up?” they chanted, echoing the Spanish King’s outburst at a recent Latin American summit in which Mr Chávez interrupted the Spanish Prime Minister repeatedly.

Mr Chávez has cast the referendum as a plebiscite on his nine years in power and said that his popular health and education programmes would be endangered by a defeat. “There is no middle ground,” he warned followers recently. “Whoever votes against the referendum is against me.”

He has also played up diplomatic spats with Spain and neighbouring Colombia, putting relations with both countries “in the freezer”. He has condemned the former Spanish Prime Minister José MarÍa Aznar as a “fascist”, called on the Spanish King to apologise to him and dismissed President Uribe of Colombia as a “servile instrument of the North American empire in Latin America”.

He also accused the US television news network CNN of inciting opponents to assassinate him.

Mr Chávez won a resounding reelection victory less than a year ago, which he interpreted as a broad mandate to transform the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter. Since then a student opposition has sprung up, sparked by his decision to close down RCTV, an opposition TV channel, and concern at his increasing authoritarianism.

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