Tomorrow We Eat SanGwiches

This past Sunday the people of Venezuela voted and their voice was heard loud and proud. They voted against President Hugo Chavez' bid for constitutional reform that would have basically given him unchecked power over Venezuela.  Here is what he wanted: To be president for life, change the laws as he saw fit and in times of emergency he could control the airwaves.

The reforms were voted down by a margin of 51-49 percent.  Polls have indicated that there was a 20% no show of people from the poorer sections of Venezuela.  Chavez has garnered most of his support from the poor of Venezuela (where they outnumber the middle and wealthy class by 3 to 1).  They have also benefited the most from Chavist reforms, He has turned some of his petro-dollars to give them housing and education. 

I don't have enough space in my blog to debate numbers and why 20% of the people didn't turn out to vote; maybe they were up too late the night before at a pro-chavez rally and couldn't be bothered to show up.  Maybe the education that Chavez has given to them has taught them that "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely" Many thanks go out to my parents for spending a god-awful amount of money on my college education so that I can finally use that quote.

Quick aside, my cousin was working the voting tables in Caracas where the votes from the entire country were tallied and the vote was a bit larger than 51-49, but the Chavistas "told" them as soon as they knew the referendum to be lost to "keep it close".  So there you go another rigged election, this time it was so that someone didn't lose that bad. Go figure.

BTW unless someone gets this man out of power soon, he will get this referendum passed by hook or by crook, mostly crook though.