Chavez Seeks Unlimited Reelections As Economy Crashes Around Him

Give [T]hugo Chavez credit. Once he's picked out a course of action, nothing is going to stop him from attempting to bring it to fruition. In his case, it's not only seeking totalitarian powers and a lifetime presidency, but destroying the economy of Venezuela and its neighbors through socialism and price controls.

Chavez is limited from running for reelection after 2013, but that's not stopping him from trying to get the laws changed.

Chavez, who was first elected in 1998, is barred from running again when his current term expires in 2013. He sought to abolish term limits last year, but Venezuelan voters rejected the bid, voting down a package of proposed constitutional changes.

"Last year, when we lost the referendum, I said I should accept the majority's decision," the former paratroop commander told a crowd of red-clad government supporters at a rally in Caracas. But now, he added, "I say you were right: Chavez will not go."

Any new attempt at a reform, which must be approved in a nationwide referendum, would open a new front for tensions between government-backers and their rivals — many of whom warn that Chavez wants to be president for life.

Opposition leader Gerardo Blyde said Chavez's plan to end presidential term limits would be overwhelmingly defeated.

At the same time, Chavez's economic policies are having a disastrous spillover effect into Colombia. Much of the recent growth in Venezuela's economy was due to oil revenue, and with the decline in oil prices, Venezuela simply doesn't have money to burn and Colombia's economy is reliant on Venezuela even as they are rivals:

That boom, part of a seven-fold surge in Colombian exports to its northern neighbor that helped drive the peso to a nine- year high in June, is coming to an end as Venezuela’s oil-driven economic expansion careens toward a bust.

“Time to tighten the belt,” says Hernandez, whose company, Marroquinera SA, has been exporting to Venezuela since 1985.

The looming slowdown in trade will deepen the peso’s 30 percent slide against the dollar since mid-June and make it the worst-performing currency in Latin America over the next year, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. say. When Venezuela last fell into a recession, in 2002, Colombian shipments to its second-biggest trading partner sank 38 percent, helping spark a 21 percent rout in the peso.

There’s going to be “a major drop in Venezuelan demand for Colombian products,” said Boris Segura, a Latin America economist at Morgan Stanley in New York. “That’s a clear and imminent risk.”

That's one of the reasons that Colombia needs to have closer trade ties with the US; not only to bolster US ties in Latin America, but to thwart Chavez's ambitions for the region.