Chavez wins re-election by wide margin

AP via Yahoo ^ | December 3, 2006 | N/A

[ARealMothersSonForever]

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez, an outspoken opponent of the United States who has used Venezuela's oil wealth to give handouts to the poor, won re-election to another six-year term by a wide margin on Sunday, official results showed.

With 78 percent of voting stations reporting, Chavez had 61 percent to 38 percent for challenger Manuel Rosales, said Tibisay Lucena, head of the country's elections council. Chavez had nearly 6 million votes versus 3.7 million for Rosales, according to the partial tally.

Turnout was 62 percent, according to an official bulletin of results, making Chavez's lead insurmountable.

[dogbyte12]

Chavez most likely got all those votes. He is giving the oil revenues to the poor, and stealing private property from the wealthy. Of course alot of the poor vote for him, that is until the country turns broke when oil drops and the money runs out during an election cycle and there is no more private property to confiscate.

[Hope from Venezuela]

Of course he has to have an opponent. Can you think of a better way for him to be declared legal and legitimate president of Venezuela? The only polititian who was clear about this situation was Henry Ramos Allup, from the Acción Democrática party. Months ago he said that without proper conditions it would be suicide to participate in this election. The opposition as a whole criticized him for his statements. Another Venezuelan who repeated once and again that it was madness to participate in an election without conditions was former Chávez ally and former Ambassador to the OAS, Virginia Contreras, who now lives in Washington D.C. Months ago, she said that a statement should be made to the international news media by all opposing parties that there were no conditions to go to elections against a president who has control of all powers, including the electoral one. The opposition missed their last change at being considered a "serious" opposition.

[xsmommy]

I have very good friends here in the US from Venezuela with family there. They said that there were lists of those who signed the petition against Chavez in the LAST election and those people were fired from or not given jobs, visas etc. There will be retribution against those who voted against him, count on it.

[Leftism is Mentally Deranged]

Chavez gave away things. The public became addicted to the free things. They reelected the guy who gives away free things.
Before long this leads to govmnt geting bigger, all-encompassing, intrusive, controlling, authoritarian, dictatorial. Dissenters are suppressed. People have less and less. Elite has more and more.
People are too stupid to know that their choice brought about their ruin.

[SoFloFreeper]

This jackass is dictator for life. He'll do for Venezuela what Castro did for Cuba.

[EndWelfareToday]

Doesn’t he own a software company that powers the e-voting machines? Or did they use paper ballots.

Naaaaa... You'd be surprised how well lead works as a motivator in getting people to vote for your guy.

[rippingmyhairout]

"The democrats would like to get us in the same situation."

Well, it is the Dummiecrap motto...."Keep 'em down and keep 'em dumb."

[Piquaboy]

What a surprise!

[jmcenanly]

Where is James Bond when you need him?

[oblomov]

Boycott Citgo, if you haven't already.

[Tolsti]

You got it right. The more you study Soviet history and marixism in general, the more you see this ebb and flow of people that are attracted to it, live it, then repulse from it. It happens in various amounts of disaster.

Sadly, a lot of people want a marxist utopian life. A lot.

[A. Pole]

Hugo Chavez emulated Vladimir Putin in winning Re-election through fradulent means.

Oh really?

Let us see, these are the results of 2004 elections:

---

Vladimir Putin - United Russia 48,931,376 - 71.2%

Nikolay Kharitonov - Communist Party of the Russian Federation 9,440,860 - 13.7%

Sergey Glazyev - populist supported by Rodina 2,826,641 - 4.1%

Irina Khakamada - open society/free market 2,644,644 3.8%

Oleg Malyshkin Liberal - Democratic Party of Russia (of Zhirinovsky) - 1,394,070 2.0%

Sergey Mironov - pro-Putin :) Russian Party of Life 518,893 - 0.8%

---

So according to you Putin has stolen the presidency from Khakamada?

[oblomov]

Don't generalize to all of FR or even "most" of FR based on what a vocal minority say. I think most of FR would justifiably praise the economic policies of Costa Rica and Panama, and would support the cause of the Cuban expatriates in south Florida. Also, most of FR was galvanized against the Clinton Administration's actions in the Elian Gonzales affair.

[pgkdan]

Surprise, surprise, surprise!

[proud_yank]

LOL No worries! I need to catch up when I get back home, and have my complete list.

The media seems to be loving Hugo's win, no?

[sully777]

Saddam Hussein won by a landslide in his last election. Chavez is in good company.

[concerned about politics]

give handouts to the poor

The same way the democrats win here in the U.S., except the poor are poor by choice and democrats steal the money from the other citizens paychecks to do it.

[concerned about politics]

Doesn't he own the software company that powers the e-vote machnes?

Our voting machines, too, and the democrats easily took power. It kinda makes me wanna go "Hmmmm."

[GregH]

It is not hard to believe Chavez won easily his reelection.

He is a hard core populist and has given away all sort of goodies and welfare give aways to the nations poor and no doubt they swarmed the poll stations.

I think the business and the upper middle class in Venezule despise Chavez and his bully tactics but the rest of the poor think he is some sort of hero for his welfare programs.

[ChicagoConservative27]

Bob Beckel will go on TV and say the election was legal. He did it the last election.