Reply #: The vote is going to be close. Only the STUPID will vote for Chavez's plan.

[MADem]

Just like only the STUPID voted for BushCo here.

The students, who do not oppose Chavez, just his crapping on the Constitution, aren't stupid. Nor are the opposition groups, many of whom USED to support Chavez, as well as the NiNis.

Let's look at what's in that lovely referendum, why don't we? Like we haven't before:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1128/p08s01-comv.html

A Dec. 2 referendum in Venezuela that would grant extreme powers to Hugo Chávez isn't going as the budding dictator planned. Youth are protesting and the poor have doubts. Just who is the "left" in Venezuela is now up for grabs.

By hook or crook, President Chávez may yet win this referendum, which proposes 69 amendments to the Constitution. The most worrisome one would remove limits on his reelection – for life. Others would allow him to take private property in an "emergency" and give him direct power over the nation's foreign currency reserves. Media and human rights groups could also be restrained. (See related story.)

All this is part of Chávez's "revolution" for "21st-century socialism," only the revolution is faltering as the poor face increasing food shortages...To win votes for his draconian steps, Chávez has included amendments that would, among other things, reduce the workday from eight to six hours and expand social benefits. These, of course, have immediate appeal to the majority of Venezuela's population who are poor. But guess who sees through this latest populist power play: Left-leaning students on university campuses.

They've been leading nonviolent marches by the tens of thousands since October, which may be one reason polls show the plebiscite vote could be close. Student leaders say this former military coup-plotter is merely using his current domination of Congress, the state oil company, media, courts, and election authority as a way to gain even more power. They fail to see the egalitarian nature of the revolution, especially when government price controls have reduced the supply of such staples as milk.

Student protests in Latin America are often a precursor to a leader's downfall. In the current protests for a "no" vote on the Venezuela referendum, students have found support from the Catholic Church, many political allies of Chávez, and his former mentor in the military, former Defense Minister Raúl Isaías Baduel.

Their voices keep alive the hope that the poor will see their future in democracy and not the paternalistic visions of a man who brooks little opposition....Like many other impatient revolutionaries such as Pol Pot in Cambodia, Chávez wants results in a hurry. He has given a new slogan to the military: "Fatherland, Socialism or Death." It is that reliance on the military and organized thugs to get his way that so upsets leftist students.

And others, who aren't BushCo whores, as you say, don't think the world of him either, and believe that all of this hollering and bullshit is an effort to pander to that STUPID base of his:
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5g2obF0N1m7a5dakA4U6gWWb7761wD8T67HPO0

Others think he's playing to the home crowd.

"Chavez isn't thinking about invading Colombia, or attacking Colombia or declaring war on Colombia," said Teodoro Petkoff, who edits the daily newspaper Tal Cual and is among Chavez's most outspoken critics. "You can bet that after the referendum is approved things will return to normal."

Opinion surveys show Chavez faces strong opposition in Sunday's vote, which will determine whether he can be re-elected indefinitely and have other new powers to reshape Venezuela in a socialist mold.

The larger question is whether Chavez's attack-dog temperament is damaging his efforts to supplant U.S. influence in Latin America. Though he has plenty of allies in the region, "there is almost no leader in Latin America with whom Chavez hasn't fought," Petkoff notes.

Chavez recently upset Chile's center-left president, Michelle Bachelet, by suggesting that her country restore Bolivia's access to the sea, territory Chile seized in an 1879 war.
"I asked him not to make any more such declarations," she said in a TV interview last week.

He's also alarmed some Latin American intellectuals, such as Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes, who sees him as a dictator posing as a leftist crusader.

"This demigod called Hugo Chavez appears with his red beret, dressed like Mussolini on a balcony, and begins to seduce people with his siren's call," Fuentes said in an interview aired Tuesday on the Televisa network.