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Chavez taunts foes with talk of extending his presidency to 2031
AFP
CARACAS
Petroleumworld.com 05 08 06
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Saturday said he might call a referendum on remaining in office until 2031 if opposition parties boycott presidential elections in December.
Chavez, heavily favored for re-election in opinion polls, said he would call such a referendum by decree if opposition groups "accuse us of cheating, fail to acknowledge our victory, or pull out" before the election.
Venezuela's current constitution, approved in 1999, allows a president to be re-elected only once. But that rule can be changed by referendum.
"Although they accuse me of of wanting to remain in power, I'm going to ask you: do you agree to Hugo Chavez remaining president until 2031, yes or no?" Chavez asked thousands of cheering supporters in central-west Lara state.
Insisting that the National Electoral Council (NEC) would be an "impartial arbiter", Chavez said opposition groups "are setting the stage" for claims of electoral fraud and demands for the voting to be repeated.
A sector of Venezuela's fractured opposition is advocating a boycott of the presidential electon. The Democratic Action party on Wednesday announced that
it would not participate under current conditions.
Henry Ramos, its secretary general, pointed out that four of the five members of the newly appointed NEC are Chavez supporters.
Democratic Action spearheaded calls to boycott legislative elections last December in which the government, the sole participant, swept all 167 seats in the unicameral National Assembly.
Two of the six Venezuelans who want to run against Chavez -- veteran leftist and former planning minister Teodoro Petkoff, 74, and Julio Borges, 36, leader of the centrist Justice First party -- have called for the opposition to field a single candidate.
About 100 people marched in east Caracas Saturday demanding fair elections.
This oil rich Latin American nation is polarized between those who idolize the populist president and those who detest him.
Chavez, who spent two years in jail for leading a failed military coup in 1992, was first elected in 1998. He spent much of his first year in office guiding a new constitution through a successful referendum, then was re-elected by a landslide in July 2000 for a six-year term.
His opponents toppled him in an attempted coup on April 2, 2002, but the firebrand president made a triumphant return just two days later.
Chavez also survived a crippling strike of the vital oil sector from December 2002 to February 2003 and an August 2004 recall referendum that was roundly defeated by voters.
A close ally of Cuba's Fidel Castro, Chavez is an ardent critic of the government of the United States, the number one consumer of its oil.
AFP 05 07 06 0140 GMT
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