[lbo-talk] NYT: Chavez loses, 51% to 49%; Chavez does concede on TV

[wrobert at uci.edu]

> Dennis Claxton wrote:
>>> It was the most controversal-its what caused Chavez's allies and
>>> other parts of the left to break with him.
>>>
I was just listening to Uprising on the controversy over constitutional
reforms in Bolivia, and the U.S. media has similarly been obsessing over
the lifting of term limits over other reforms.  While I feel sketchy about
the term limit element of the reform, I feel that the defeat is overall
more negative than positive.  I thought that the attempt to create a
property classification of communal land, for instance, was a really
interesting idea and worth pursuing.  But its obvious that this was
botched tactically by the chavistas.  Hopefully, some of the
non-presidential reforms can be returned to at some point.  Robert Wood