Venezuela to vote on Chavez term
Venezuela is to hold a referendum next month on whether to remove limits on re-electing presidents, officials said.
The vote is set for 15 February, and if passed, would allow President Hugo Chavez to run for office again.
The announcement comes a day after MPs backed a constitutional amendment brought by Mr Chavez’s supporters.
A plan to lift term limits was defeated by the Venezuelan people last year. The BBC’s correspondent in Caracas says the issue has sharply divided the nation.
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Announcing the date of the referendum, the head of Venezuela’s electoral council, Tibisay Lucena, said the poll would be “clean, transparent and reliable”.
Mr Chavez - who was first elected president in 1998 - has argued he needs another 10 years in office to consolidate what he calls his socialist revolution.
The opposition says the entire process is unconstitutional and amounts to a power cialis grab by Mr Chavez.
In the past few days, students from the private universities have mobilised a number of protests against the referendum, which by and large have passed off peacefully, the BBC’s Will Grant in Caracas says.
Neither side wants a repeat of the violence which marred the last referendum campaign, in which a number of protesters were killed, our correspondent says.
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