HUGO OVERPLAYS HIS HAND

Hugo Chavez wanted a free hand to run Venezuela for a lifetime. On Sunday, in a national referendum people voted 51-49% to reject numerous reforms to the Constitution that would have allowed him to remain in office indefinitely.

A telling comment, reported by the Washington Post, was by Wilfredo Vivas, 45, a cabbie, who said among the troubling alterations was one under which Chávez could name governors and mayors.

"He says he gives more power to the people, but in that article I see that he's taken power away from the people," Vivas said. "Now we won't elect mayors or governors, but he names them."

Part of me can understand that Chavez wants to maintain control to ensure that social progress in Venezuela continues. But becoming a dictator for life is not the solution. Chavez should spend his time and national resources to develop leadership in the local communities and barrios if he wants the progress of social reform to continue.

The only way to ensure a generation of progress is to educate and involve people in real decision making at the local level. Consolidating power in the hands of a few is the wrong answer.

Chavez has now handed his opponents a great organizing tool to oppose him. Instead of wasting the time and energy this failed referendum took, he should have been doubling his efforts to bring the poor to greater positions of leadership in the country. I'm sure to some extent he has been doing that but it appears that even some of his allies turned against him on this vote. In some cases even his friends could see that Chavez was making a mistake that would alienate him from the public that he purports to serve.

The good thing in all of this is that the vote reveals that large segments of even Chavez supporters have now come to expect that the people should control their government. That is the right way for sure. It would be nice if in the U.S. more of our public would demand that "we the people" run our government rather than the corporate lackeys that control our nation today.