Notice the parrallel with Chavez?
Venezuela’s Chavez Eyes Feb 15 For Referendum On Term Limits
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has penciled in Feb. 15 as the date for a referendum that, if passed, would give him a license to run for re-election indefinitely.
The leftist leader, a fierce critic of the U.S. for much of the decade he has already spent in power, predicted in his weekly television broadcast on Sunday that half the country’s 17 million registered voters would back him.
Mary A. O’Grady : Dictatorship for Dummies
http://www.petroleumworld.com/Ed09011301.htm
“Certainly “elections” can’t be expected to matter much. Mr. Chávez now controls the entire electoral process, from voter rolls to tallying totals after the polls have closed. Under enormous public pressure he accepted defeat in his 2007 bid for constitutional reforms designed to make him president for life. But so what? That loss allowed him to maintain the guise of democracy, and now he has decided that there will be another referendum on the same question in February. Presumably Venezuela will repeat this exercise until the right answer is produced. “
Yep, that’s the first thing I noticed, too.