Venezuela tonight held its first presidential debate. But it wasn’t quite like any other debate I’ve ever heard of. Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez refused to participate of course, due to a congenital inability to share the television screen with any other human being. The Caracas megalomaniac just can’t make himself do it.

But that was no problem for Venezuela’s enterprising private sector. Globovision took his long windy speech off state TV, ran half the screen with the dictator’s bloviating, and then had Venezuelan opposition candidate Manuel Rosales reply to each and every Chavez lie and idiocy.

Can you imagine?

They had a debate whether Chavez liked it or not. I am sure Rosales won this one by the way, dictators like Chavez get soft and soggy when they are no longer accountable to anyone, and cannot debate effectively. A classic case is in what Chavez said today: that he has made lots of mistakes and this is exactly why he should have another term in office! He doesn’t get it about crime and punishment, does he?

In a way, Chavez seems to be running scared with such a statement, Rosales is rapidly gaining on him in the polls. That in turn may be another reason why he didn’t want to come out like a man and debate Rosales.

Daniel has the whole surreal presidential debate, described in his brilliant entertaining way, in this post here.

Alek has a good item about how many different and creative ways Chavez has of avoiding blame for his own failures in this essay here.

And check out Miguel’s awesome note about Chavez’s nutty meltdown campaign speech, written with full commentary, in this post here.