Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Monday 3 December 2007
Venezuela: A Functioning Democracy
In a dictatorship, a referendum does not go the wire, and the dictator certainly does not lose. Rather, he gets ninety-nine per cent of the vote, or something like that. So Venezuela is not a dictatorship. She is a functioning democracy. And she would have remained so if the referendum had gone the other way: Chávez could only have "stayed for life" if the People had kept voting for him until he died.
The vote must have been about 70-30 against the referendum -- too large a margin to steal, despite Chavez's best efforts.
ReplyDeleteIt would have been easily "big enough to steal" in a dictatorship. Anything would be. But Venezuela isn't one. Evidently.
ReplyDelete