Last Sunday, Venezuelans went to the voting booths for the twelfth time in the last ten years. This time they voted on whether to allow the president and other elected officials to run for reelection indefinitely. Although Venezuelans rejected a similar constitutional reform in December 2007, President Hugo Chávez managed to ask the question one more time. On February 15, 2009 he got what he wanted. With a 54% affirmative vote, Venezuelans approved the constitutional reform. Hugo Chávez thanked his people for supporting him and confirmed his participation in the 2012 presidential election.
Contrary to what happened in Nicaragua last year where violence erupted on election-day and international observers and opposition candidates challenged the results of local elections, the results of the Venezuelan referendum have not been contested by the opposition or international observers. Opposition leaders accepted the results, though they legitimately condemn the advantage that the government had during the campaign. In fact, Chávez’s government used all means possible to channel the state apparatus to win the election. For example, a few days before the referendum took place, Hugo Chávez’s government promised the construction of major public housing developments.
The normality under which the referendum took place, however, does not mean that a path is clear for Venezuela’s prosperity or its democracy. As CEDICE, a Venezuelan think-thank, put it in a statement before the election:
It is not enough for citizens to chose freely their representatives, it is also important that there is alternation of power. (…) The Constitutional reform is freezing the power pyramid so it will remain like that for many years to come.
A democracy indeed has many more attributes than just the holding of elections. Yet many leaders reduce the concept of democracy to elections, purposely, to satisfy their own ends. President Alvaro Uribe, from Colombia, immediately congratulated his neighbor for his “democratic victory”. The Colombian president is still thinking about modifying his country’s Constitution to run for office for a third term. Advocating for the full set of attributes that encompass a democracy, and that allow a market economy to operate efficiently, is still a challenge in Latin America today.
Hugo Chávez mentioned in his victory speech on Sunday night that he will fight corruption and crime in the upcoming years. For Hugo Chávez to achieve those goals, he must do more than continue winning elections. Corruption and other maladies are fought effectively with a particular institutional system he is not willing to embrace.
Nobel Laureate 
