Venezuela and Russia Voting: Will the Thugs Win?

While Venezuelans vote for the right to turn over the reins of power to [T]hugo Chavez for an unlimited number of terms, and enabling the thuggish socialist unprecedented power, Chavez is busy trying to gin up support claiming that the US is attempting to influence the outcome of the election and banging on the war drums.

Chavez has warned opponents he will not tolerate attempts to stir up violence, and threatened to cut off oil exports to the U.S. if Washington interferes. His country is a major supplier to the United States, which in turn is the No. 1 buyer of Venezuelan oil.

"In the case of an aggression by the United States government, we wouldn't send any more oil to that country," Chavez told reporters Saturday. "Forget about our oil."

Chavez, who has become Latin America's most outspoken antagonist of Washington since he was first elected in 1998, calls the constitutional overhaul vital to making Venezuela a socialist state. He labels those who resist it pawns of U.S. President George W. Bush.

While the Venezuelan government touts polls showing Chavez ahead, other surveys cited by the opposition indicate strong resistance - which would be a change for a leader who easily won re-election last year with 63 percent of the vote.

Pollster Luis Vicente Leon said tracking polls by his firm Datanalisis in the past week show the vote is too close to predict. Which side wins will depend largely on turnout among Chavez's supporters and opponents, he said.

"If he wins by a very small margin, that's a scenario filled with conflict," Leon said. "In a country where there are high levels of mistrust between the camps, it's obvious the opposition ... would think it was fraud."

Fraud and intimidation are a given, as Chavez has watched as his thugs have taken to the streets in going after the opposition. He's shuttered opposition media outlets and his actions are one of a paranoid delusional.

Meanwhile, Russians are going to the polls and making a similar choice. Are they going to empower the Putin regime, who is seeking to restore the Cold War and enable the Russians to go toe-to-toe with the US on everything, even if it undermines their own personal freedoms.

Russia began voting Sunday in a parliamentary election where the only question is whether President Vladimir Putin's party will win merely a strong majority of seats or a gargantuan, crushing share.

The election follows months of increasingly acidic rhetoric aimed against the West and efforts, by law and by truncheon, to stifle opponents.

A huge win for Putin's United Russia party could pave the way for him to stay at the country's helm once his presidential term expires in the spring. The party casts the election as essentially a referendum on Putin's nearly eight years in office. Many of its campaign banners that festoon the capital read "Moscow is voting for Putin."

The election law was recently altered in how seats in the Parliament will be allocated, and this favors Putin's party. Like in Venezuela, the slouching towards dictatorship comes through baby steps and "adjustments" to the democratic systems in place.

The end result is not a democracy, but a socialist dictatorship.

UPDATE:
No surprises here. Chavez is claiming victory in Venezuela, and Putin's party won the parliamentary elections in Russia.

This, however, is quite entertaining. Watching pro-Chavez folks protesting outside the Venezuelan consulate in New York City and saying that they wanted to see the US adopt Venezuelan positions should make one question why they're supporting Chavez's bid to become a dictator for life?

I don't think it means what they think it means unless they're looking for a socialist dictatorship hell on earth - just like every other socialist dictatorship.

Chavez was busy warning of conflagration if the US meddled in the Venezuelan elections, but Chavez has no problem meddling in Spain's elections. This is what thugs do. Do as I say; don't do as I do.

Chavez and Putin are both dangerous - both to their respective countries, and to those who oppose thuggish and regimes teetering towards dictatorship.

The NY Times likes to couch the Venezuela elections as one that would hasten the arrival of a socialist state - ignoring the totalitarian and dictatorial nature of the regime with Chavez in the leading role.

Fausta has been liveblogging this sad day in Venezuelan history.

UPDATE:
Hold the phone on Chavez. Seems that things are far tighter than the earlier reports were indicating. Don't rule out chicanery, but Chavez is in a far tighter race than he probably envisioned. Expect him to complain bitterly that the US intervened or somehow threw the election for the opposition or other such nonsense, even if he manages to pull out the win.