Chavez claims victory in term limit vote

CARACAS, Venezuela, Feb. 15 (UPI) -- Voters in Venezuela Sunday approved a referendum that will allow President Hugo Chavez to remain office well into the next decade, the government said.

Electoral officials said that, with 94 percent of the ballots counted, a referendum to end term limits was passing with 54 percent approval, The Washington Post reported.

Chavez, who has pushed a leftist agenda since taking office in 1999, has used his nation's oil wealth to drive what many call a Bolivian revolution in Venezuela -- including programs that use government resources to win support among the country's poorest citizens by providing for basic needs, the newspaper said.

Passage of the referendum means Chavez, 54, will be able to run for re-election in 2012 and govern until 2019.

"Today, my political destiny is being decided," Chavez said at a voting station Sunday. "This is important for me, as a human being, as a soldier in this struggle. It is important, and I ask God that this process have a good completion and that, at last, the wishes of the Venezuelan people be imposed."

Venezuelan voters in December 2007 rejected a constitutional amendment that would have expanded the president's authority, including a provision to eliminate term limits.

Luigina Villano voted Sunday against the referendum, as she had against the 2007 proposal.

"We voted a year ago and we said, 'No,'" she said. "And here he is, back with the same proposal. We are tired of the same proposal, tired.

"If he wins, we are going to have to leave Venezuela," she said.