All this month, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has explained in one speech after another how he would like nothing more than to leave office when his term ends in 2013. But the Venezuelan people are urging him to remain in the presidency, Chavez has said, and he will not disappoint. "I am not the one planting this. It is the people who are planting this," Chavez said Wednesday before red-shirted supporters in the coastal city of Cumana. "I would prefer to leave in four years, for many reasons -- human and personal reasons. But in the end, at this stage in my life, I am conscious that I do not belong to myself."
Chavez says he belongs to the people of his oil-rich country. The National Assembly, a body with only a handful of government foes, is expected to support a measure next week that would trigger a referendum asking Venezuelans to approve a constitutional amendment scrapping term limits. If Chavez wins that vote, to be held as early as February, the former army paratrooper could rule until at least 2019 -- 20 years after he first took office with a promise to dismantle Venezuela's old social and political order.
"Ten more years of the revolution will come," Chavez said Saturday to throngs outside the Miraflores presidential palace. "I will be here until God wills it."
The populist firebrand's renewed effort to remain in office a year after voters rejected a referendum that would have eliminated term limits underscores the challenge the administration of President-elect Barack Obama faces in Venezuela.
During a tumultuous decade in power, Chavez has survived a coup and an oil workers' strike. He took the initiative against opponents, debilitated foes and, in the process, took control of all government institutions. He has used Venezuela's formidable oil coffers to build an anti-Washington alliance with like-minded governments in Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua.
Chavez has also forged ties with Iran and assisted Marxist guerrillas in neighboring Colombia, American and Colombian officials say, while escalating verbal attacks on Venezuelan opposition figures and the country's private news media.