La Tristeza en Caracas
Venezuela approved Hugo Chávez’s Constitutional amendment that permits indefinite re-election by a wide margin. In the end, the YES vote took 54.36% to the NO vote’s 45.64%. Technically-speaking that’s just shy of a landslide margin.
From the Associated Press:
“Those who voted ‘yes’ today voted for socialism, for revolution,” Chavez said. He called the victory — which allows all public officials to run for re-election indefinitely — a mandate to speed his transformation of Venezuela into a socialist state.
“Today we opened wide the gates of the future,” he said. “In 2012 there will be presidential elections, and unless God decides otherwise, unless the people decide otherwise, this soldier is already a candidate.”
This is from my perpective a setback for the region but I am also cognizant that the main power in Latin America remains Brazil. The hard left of Chávez, Correa and Ortega have limited appeal in the region. The pragmatic left of Lula da Silva remains the model.
More photos of the agony of defeat at Noticias 24.
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Stunning in his honesty, but Pakistan’s President Asif Ali Zadari tells 60 Minutes Steve Kroft that various Taliban-affiliated militant groups are present in “huge amounts of land” in Pakistan and his Government is in a battle to survive against the growing threat of the Taliban. Without question, large swaths of the Northwest Tribal Areas are under direct or indirect Taliban control.
More from CBS News:
Pakistan’s new president, Asif Ali Zardari, says his nuclear-armed government is in a battle to survive against the growing threat of the Taliban, which his country failed to take strong action against earlier.
Now the Muslim militant group has extended its presence from the tribal borderlands inland to larger cities, Zardari tells 60 Minutes correspondent Steve Kroft in an interview to be broadcast this Sunday, Feb. 15, at 7 p.m. ET/PT.
“[The Taliban] do have a presence in huge amounts of land in our side. Yes, that is the fact,” says Zardari. Once confined to the county’s border area with Afghanistan, where they carried out strikes against U.S. troops over the border, the Taliban have extended their influence in Pakistan inland to cities like Peshawar and the Swat Valley.
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