El pueblo dijo Si

February the 15th, 2009 was a very important day for the future of Venezuela. That day there was a vote on a on a constitutional referendum to remove the two-term limit from the Venezuelan Constitution of 1999. This would allow politicians to stay in the office for as long as they continue to win elections. That day people decide whether to let current president Hugo Chavez run for the office indefinitely. This is Chavez's second attempt to try to remain in power following the referendum that was held in Venezuela on December 2, 2007 that also included several other proposals that would have given Chavez dictatorship power. Mainly due to waste student protests, spontaneous mobilization and campaign of the opposition referendum of the 2007 was the first Chavez election loss. According to the existing regulations (before referendum) Chavez will leave office in 2012 as his second term of holding the office comes to an end.
The need for constitutional changes brought together Chavez supporters around red Si campaign - well financed, better organized, and warmly welcomed by the authorities. Critics of the proposal changes ran the No campaign; which in most cases consisted of student meetings and demonstrations. As the eye-witness of the pre referendum turmoil always had the impression that police and security forces, however passive and rather quiet, were here to protect and help Chavistas.
The vote was something more than just another referendum. In the country where real opposition to the government barely exists, is disorganized and has few capabilities of reaching the society (most of the mass media are controlled by the government), giving the rulers even a slight chance to strengthen their power is highly dangerous. Many people feel completely dissatisfied with the style and direction outlined by the Chavez-run government; most of those people are former Chavez supporters...but, as the polls showed, there weren't enough who felt the same way.


A little update on my housing situation. I changed my host family. I live far away from the school now, my bed is even smaller, but with people that I really like...and they don't charge me $10 every time I do my laundry.

Do you know?
There are 4 TV channels with national reach in Venezuela after taking RCTV off the air for being critical of the government and encouraging attempts to overthrow Chavez. Two of them - Televen and Venevision - are very sympathetic to Hugo Chavez, and the other two - TVes (state run station that replaced RCTV over the air) and Venezolana de Television - are simply government propaganda. However the RCTV - Venezoela's oldest private broadcaster is still available through cable networks alongside with another opposition station Globovision, luck of possibility of public broadcast (government permission) causes significant shortage of their audience.