Bye, Bye Chavez

CARACAS (Reuters) - President Hugo Chavez crashed to an unprecedented vote defeat on Monday as Venezuelans narrowly rejected his bid to run for re-election indefinitely and accelerate his socialist revolution in the OPEC nation.

In a fiercely contested referendum on Sunday, voters said “No” to a raft of reforms that would have scrapped term limits on Chavez’s rule, boosted his powers to expropriate private property and allowed him to censor the media in emergencies.

The “No” camp won with about 51 percent of the vote, beating the anti-U.S. president who scored around 49 percent support, election officials said early on Monday.

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