[DAWN] IT was almost 20 years ago that Hugo Chavez threatened to upset the established order in Latin America with the first of his many electoral victories. Six years after he had led an abortive coup attempt in Venezuela, he decisively won the 1998 presidential election and set about ushering in the transformation he had in mind.One of his first steps was to bring in a new constitution, which won approval in a popular vote. That Chavez’s chosen successor, Nicolas Maduro, is now determined to rewrite that constitution, seemingly against the popular will, is widely viewed as a desperate gamble by a leader who is out of his depth, yet determined to cling on to power.
Maduro was elected president by a small margin in 2013, largely on the basis of his predecessor’s imprimatur, after Chavez sadly succumbed to cancer in 2013, but the parliamentary elections two years later yielded a substantial majority for the disparate opposition. The constituent assembly that Maduro has assembled following a disputed electoral exercise is obviously intended to override that democratic disadvantage. But it marks a significant break with Chavismo, given that none of the elections that sustained Chavez in power was manipulated.