Looks like he's going to be re-elected.


More info here.

And here.

And here, too.


I'm quite happy about that. I know the American government doesn't like Chavez, but I think a counter-balance to the might of the USA is a good thing.

Yeah, he'll probably win.

More than anything, Chavez's problem is that his success has been the result of high oil prices; and since he's basically got control of the nation's oil revenues outside of the budget, he uses that money for large-scale bribery. With the sheer amount of underpriced oil he's been promising lately to various places around the world, I'm starting to wonder how many of those offers are actually going to bear fruit.

Venezuela doesn't have an unlimited supply of oil to call upon, and since Chavez came to power, their ability to keep up production has been in doubt, as the managers of their fields are sacked and the employees strike. There's a lot of speculation that much of the infrastructure is falling into serious disrepair.

Trying to build a nation on the back of a single non-renewable commodity is a recipe for eventual disaster. If Chavez really wants to help his country, he needs to stop using its oil as his personal political club, and start focusing on building and maintaining real physical infrastructure, as well as pursing policies and programs to develop, attract, and keep other businesses in Venezuela with more long-term stability and less market volatility than oil.

Yeah, but do you think that Chavez will still be in power once his resource (oil) runs out? I doubt he will be, he'll ride the wave of "fight da' power" and all as far as it will take him, then jump ship before it harms him.

I have a real problem with movements centered around their leaders (elected or otherwise) that fail to take note of how things are actually affecting the people. The problem in Venezuela, as has already been mentioned, is that it's relying on petrodollars to fund Chavez's government's programs. If you really want to quit the dependency game, imperialist or otherwise, you need to look at real autocentric economies that don't rely on the black goo. Frankly, I haven't read enough about Venezuela to know what other programs people are trying to implement, but Chavez's "petro-missionary development" isn't particularly to my liking. He is charismatic though, I'd give him that. And in the fight against imperialism, you often have to take what you can get. That doesn't mean I'm a fan.

Thats the thing, about his "missions" hes set up around the country, they might work now, but when the oil is gone ALL of the funding is gone. Heck, Chavez has nationalized pretty much everything in the nation, no? When the pretty much only source of income is gone, it will be "fun" to see what happens to all of the nations, you know, infrastructure

I don't have any numbers for it, but I doubt Venezuela's going to be running out of oil anytime soon. Chavez will probably be long dead before the last well runs dry. What's more likely to get him into trouble is a price drop, and I can't really say what would happen to him in that situation, he may try to retire and get out while he's still got some popularity, or he may try going to dictator route; a lot of it depends on how long he can go before something like that happens.