CARACAS (AFP) — Venezuelan voters were to decide Sunday whether to give President Hugo Chavez wider powers, including limitless re-election, in a referendum seen as too close to call.
Chavez, a fiercely anti-US leader who has run his oil-rich country for the past eight years, has accused any who challenge the reforms of being "traitors."
He has also warned he would cut off all oil exports if violence breaks out during or after polling, claiming the United States was fomenting unrest.
Opposition has grown to the 39 changes he has proposed to Venezuela's constitution, with university students being joined by former Chavez allies.
Street protests in the lead-up to the vote, many brutally dispersed by teargas-firing police, culminated Thursday in a mass rally in which demonstrators said Chavez was trying to establish a Cuba-like communist state in the mold of his mentor, Fidel Castro.
But Thursday's protest was followed an even larger pro-Chavez rally the next day.
Surveys suggested a near-even split among the country's 16 million voters who will be casting ballots between 6:00 am and 4:00 pm (1000 GMT and 2000 GMT).
Chavez, in a news conference Saturday that apparently broke electoral rules banning campaigning on the eve of polling, confirmed he would halt oil exports if he saw US meddling.
"There will be no oil for anyone, and the price per barrel will go up to 200 dollars," he said.
Venezuela, an OPEC member, currently exports around 60 percent of its oil to the United States. The trade is worth 37 billion dollars a year at current prices, and supplies about 11 percent of US oil needs.
The left-wing leader, a 53-year-old former soldier, wants to impose "economic socialism" on Venezuela through his reforms.
The measures include lengthening his mandate from six years to seven, doing away with term limits, allowing the government to censor the media in times of emergency, and permitting the expropriation of property.
He told his final campaign rally on Friday the country had a choice between his socialist vision or the "imperialism" of the United States.
"A vote 'yes' is a vote for Chavez -- a vote 'no' is a vote for (US President) George W. Bush," he said.
Chavez has also attacked CNN for allegedly calling for his assassination when a caption went to air under his image with the words "Who killed him?"
CNN has apologized for what it said was a mistake, explaining the caption referred to another story, about a murdered US football player.
One of Chavez's strongest critics is his former defense minister, Raul Baduel, who wrote a tract published Saturday by the New York Times newspaper.
"Venezuela will thrive only when all its citizens truly have a stake in society. Consolidating more power in the presidency through insidious constitutional reforms will not bring that about.
"That?s why the Venezuelan people should vote 'no,'" he wrote.
But Tulio Hernandez, a professor at the Central University of Venezuela, said Chavez's personal charisma can again play a crucial role.
"People have never voted to support his socialist projects," Hernandez told AFP. "But he is a living incarnation of savior, which is a very Latin American tradition."
The stocky Chavez has called Jesus Christ his inspiration, and Simon Bolivar, the 19th century Venezuelan who helped spread independence from Spanish colonial rule across much of Latin America, his guide.
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