Democracy for wallies

Blogger Quico has often presented excellent "Power Points for Dummies" to explain the inexplicable quirks and twists of Venezuelan economics and politics.

I will just present here a table comparing some government systems.

At the eve of the discussions to allow for unlimited re-election in Venezuela, professional Chavez apologists, people like Weissbrot, constantly said critics of the possibility of indefinite nomination for the post of president were hypocrites as "nobody elects the Queen of England and many heads of state in Europe can be nominated with no term limit". Weisbrot said

"And, of course, there's nothing in this reform that says people have to or should reelect Chavez. You know, all Europe, that I know of, does not have term limits—you know, England, France, Germany, Spain." There was little serious discussion about in the international press about what a president in Venezuela can do as compared to a German chancellor or a British prime minister or an Uruguayan president or another head of state.

Obviously, we know queens and kings are mostly there now for using scissors at inaugurations. What about the real heads of state?

Here you have a table. We don't get into the details about separation of powers and many other things. You can judge for yourself.

Country	Type of system	Possible consecutive terms	Term length in years
France	mixed	2	5
Germany	parliamentarian	no limit	4
Italy	parliamentarian	no limit	5
Norway	parliamentarian	no limit	4
Spain	parliamentarian	no limit	4
United Kingdom	parliamentarian	no limit	5 or less
Argentina	presidential	2	4
Brazil	presidential	2	4
Canada	parliamentarian	no limit	5 or less
Chile	presidential	1	5
Colombia	presidential	2 (3 in the future?)	4
Costa Rica	presidential	1	4
Cuba	presidential	no limit	5
Mexico	presidential	1	6
Uruguay	presidential	1	5
USA	presidential	2	4
Venezuela	presidential	no limit	6

Venezuela before 98:presidential 1 5

Here we have the president of Venezuela talking and talking and talking to his employees (most in red).
Here we have the normal debates the British Parliament is so famous for.
Here you have a German TV debate (old video, but there are lots of those debates pre- and after elections) with the leaders of conservatives, social democrats, economic liberals, ecologists and the extreme left.
The Venezuelan president now getting into an open debate and answering questions other than about his favourite colour? Unthinkable.

There are lots of differences between parliamentarian systems and presidential systems as well as between different parliamentarian and presidential systems, but this should give you an idea already about what kind of system Venezuela is getting closer and closer to (and no, we are far from being a socialist country, we are closer to the system prevalent in Russia now, even if the Russian government is economically not as inept as the Venezuelan one)