Every dictator dreams of consolidating power into the ‘dictator for life’ designation and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela is no different. Today he’s announced he’s set to change the constitution to his liking, which would mean he would no longer be limited to two terms, but to as many as he wants. As many unlimited terms, with unlimited power and nonexistent accountability as he likes. It’s Chavez’s dream. Given his way of running elections on a Chavez-wins platform, that means dictator for life.

Miguel has a translation of newspaperman Teodoro Petkoff’s reaction here. Petkoff writes:

Chavez is ???????studying??????? the possibility of reforming the Constitution to rule until his body can take it. The condition to fulfill this threat would be that no opposition candidates participate in December and let him running alone. Which, of course and can be discounted, according that that frankly idiotic logic that sees even in the most trivial transportation strike a ???????maneuver of imperialism??????? would also be a move by the empire. Forget your hypocrisy and throw once and for all your pig????????s tail to reform the Constitution, You have always wanted that and for a long time you have been looking for the argument to consecrate the lifetime Presidency. Stop play acting and ???????echale bolas??????? (go ahead and do it) once and for all! We will se how Venezuelans respond to that tyrannical initiative.

Miguel also has a great essay of his own here. Miguel writes:

This is a clear example of the type of circular logic Chavez uses regularly: Conditions for elections have been quite negative for the opposition as the Government has controlled and absolutely controls the Electoral Board as well as the conditions for all electoral processes. In the last four elections, the Ch????vez-controlled Electoral Board has refused to manually count all the ballots at every single instance and ???????graciously??????? allowed for an audit of 47% of the ballot boxes in the December Parliamentary elections. But the ???????audit??????? was not live, but rather votes were tallied manually and the Electoral Board had promised to reveal the results of the audit five weeks after the election. It has now been twelve weeks and we have yet to see the final results of the election, let alone that of the audits. So much for spending US$ 200 million in ???????the most perfect automatic voting system in the world???????. The opposition withdrew from that election when it was discovered a week before it was to take place that it was possible to identify who casted each vote, despite denials in the last four electoral processes that this was even remotely possible.

Thus, Chavez threatens to hold a referendum if electoral conditions are not agreeable to the opposition that would perpetuate him in power a la Fidel Castro. Thus, it is to his advantage not provide adequate conditions, which he absolutely controls, because he can then get his wish of becoming King or Emperor of Venezuela, which has always been his dream.

Read further and see how Miguel shows that this could all blow up in Chavez’s face.