Update on Chávez's wet dream

Hugo Chávez has just announced (in Spanish) he wants the process for calling signatures for the referendum and all that for January. He says he does not want people to be discussing that too long. What does that mean? Obviously, Chávez is starting to realise that unless the oil price rises again dramatically, he will start to get out of money at that time. As Miguel and others have pointed out, it is extremely difficult to know how much money the Venezuelan goverment has in its reserves as there is no accountability anymore (there was never a lot of that in Venezuela, but there was some)

For foreigners:

Venezuela does NOT a parliamentarian system. It has a very extreme case of presidential system and Chávez forced 26 laws last year that allow him basically to completely circumvent any local authority he wants. Besides: he as the head of the petrodollar state, is the one that distributes every single cent of the oil revenues.


Update: and he just said here (Spanish), joking, that he would ask the Chavista governor of Aragua to keep an office for him as the opposition is trying - according to Chávez - to control all of Caracas. This reminds me very strongly: do you know who else had a love for ruling from Aragua? This one
And I told you so here.