Venezuela to decide if Chavez becomes dictator for life

Venezuela to decide if Chavez becomes dictator for life

A Latin American expert says there are several reasons Americans should be carefully watching the outcome of a major referendum in Venezuela Sunday that will determine whether socialist leader Hugo Chavez will hang on to power for years and years to come in the oil-rich country. That expert says although the majority of Venezuelans likely oppose the referendum pushed by Chavez, the Venezuelan leader will likely rig the outcome of Sunday's vote in his favor.

Venezuelans will vote on 69 proposed changes to the nation's constitution that would, among other things, extend President Hugo Chavez's term in office to seven years and give him greater authority to seize private property and businesses. Jim Roberts is a Latin American expert at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. He says there are a number of threats coming from Chavez in Venezuela, a country from which the U.S. gets 12 percent of its imported oil.

"Chavez controls five percent of American domestic refining capacity through the CITGO gasoline station chain, from which he's taken the profits ... and [used] them to spread his basically neo-communism around the hemisphere," says Roberts.

Roberts says Americans should be concerned about what Chavez is doing with those petro dollars. "One of the most worrying things [is that] Chavez is also building up arms," he notes. "He bought a hundred-thousand AK-47s; he's buying fighter aircraft; he's looking to buy submarines from Russia; he's buying command-and-control equipment from Belarus."

According to the Heritage Foundation spokesman, people are curious why Chavez is building up a large army. "They're afraid he's looking to expand the territory of Venezuela to include neighboring countries -- and especially Columbia, which is one of the best U.S. allies in the region," he says.

But Roberts says the "most worrying" threat from Chavez is his close relationship with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who is working hard to develop a nuclear weapon and has said he is going to use it to wipe Israel off the face of the earth.

On the positive side, Roberts says it is "heartening" to see that opposition to Chavez is growing in the oil-rich country.

"The students are 90 percent against Chavez now," he point out, "because he closed down a popular opposition-controlled radio station that was the only voice that questioned his taking all these billions of dollars that really belong to the people of Venezuela and using them to advance his own agenda and his own power [as well as] that of his mentors in Cuba, the Castro brothers. So there is opposition."

He notes that the Roman Catholic Church is among the groups actively opposing the Venezuelan leader.

Roberts says it is ironic, however, that Venezuela has $100-a-barrel oil, yet people cannot buy milk, bread, or meat on the streets, "even if they're lucky enough not to get killed" in the capital of Caracas, which has the highest homicide rate in the world.