Hugo Chavez won his first election fair, unofrtuanely, but there is reason, from what I know, that he won his second with fraud. Also, totalitarian societies are frightently good at turning their people into cowed sheep. Chavez disarmed the Venezuelan people, if you remember, and he probably made sure to put politically reliable cronies in the Venezuelan military officer corps.
Nicoláe Ceausescu did essentially the same thing for four decades in Romania... he similarly beat the populace down to a deadened pulp and disarmed them. Yet, in 1989, the people rose up and - with the help of the Army’s rank and file - took Ceausescu down in relatively short time. The difference is, the people wanted out of that miserable existence. I’m not seeing that with Venezuela.