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No: 51%

Si: 49%

One wonders if the phone line from Caracas to Olympia and King County elections were burning last night, as Chavez tried to manufacture an electoral “victory”.

I guess it’s always nice to know that Americans can do something better than our South American cousins. 

Maybe Chavez should hire Queen Christine, Ron Sims, and the gang from King County Elections before his next run for President for Life…

For reference, I submit that there is a great example of a true Dictator that can be studied, so that people can make the distinction.  Thanks to Pajamas Media and Fausta Wertz:

Hugo Chávez calls the law “the mother of all laws”, but the official name is La Ley Habilitante, the Enabling Law.

While calling the Enabling Law the mother of all laws may not be the most delicate way of referring to it, it is the most accurate. The Enabling Law grants the President special powers to legislate in 11 areas:

institutional transformation;
popular participation; establishing public function; financial and social; taxes and finances; judicial and public safety; science and technology; territorial ordinances; security and defense;infrastructure, transport and services; and energy.

While reading the law (in Spanish), I find the item on popular participation particularly interesting (my translation, emphasis added):

“enabling the Administration the organizational structure to allow the direct exercise of Popular Power, taking into consideration that deepening the constitutional principle of starring and participative democracy is a historical commitment taken up by the National Executive”.

What all that verbiage tells me is that officially the power will now be coming exclusively from the top down.

Further down the document, item #2 reads (again, my translation, emphasis added),

2. “In the realm of popular participation,
To dictate rules establishing the mechanisms for popular participation, through social control, the technique of social inspection and through the practice of volunteering, in the community organized through the application of laws and the economic realm of the State. Also, to allow the State’s institutions’ organizational structure to bring about the direct exercise of popular sovereignty.”

To any of us familiar with Soviet-style “volunteering” and “mechanisms for popular participation”, this particular section will surely send chills down our spines.

The item on taxes and finances allows for the creation of bi-national funds for bi-national programs. What nations and what programs will be involved are entirely up to Hugo.

While the Enabling Law provides an eighteen-month period for the President to enact the laws until there is a change in the Constitution, the law has no provisions limiting its duration or its scope, according to Venezuelan daily El Pais. The President has all the authority to enact the laws of transition and will repeal laws no longer in effect.

Now THOSE are the powers of a Dictator.  No checks, no balances, his word is law.  Which is exactly what the word Dictator meant, when the power was granted to Gaius Julius Caesar.  And his Dicatatorial powers were originally time-limited as well.  We all know how that turned out.