Chavez wins reform = Walesa and Americans beware

I was appalled to hear the news coming from Venezuela today: its President, Hugo Chavez, proposed a reform to lift elected official term limits and it passed (again, barely) with just over 50% in a nationwide vote. This surely means Chavez will run again and could possibly mean he will remain Venezuela’s president beyond 2016.

If you’re sitting at home thinking this has nothing to do with you, think again. Chavez has long been an opponent of real democracy and has extreme and sometimes scary socialist notions when it comes to how nations should handle the world’s problems. He is one of the leading opponents of the U.S. as a world power, and seems to go to great lengths to lobby for the support of other socialist nations such as Cuba, Russia, and China.

The even scarier implications of this news brings rather unwelcome tidings to democratic nations. Just recently, Chavez prevented Lech Walesa, the former Nobel Peace Prize-winning Polish President, from entering Venezuela because Walesa had planned on speaking throughout the country in support of Chavez’s party opposition. We Americans love Walesa, and have also been treated rather brashly in Venezuela, so the prospects of safe and happy travels in Chavez country are not looking so great.