Chavez expected to win big today

Asserting that Venezuela's democracy isn't just for the rich and powerful anymore, posters plastered to doors and lamp posts in Caracas' slums proclaim that under President Hugo Chavez, "We all govern."

Chavez has spent billions of petrodollars on health, nutrition and literacy programs for the poor and has urged them to get involved in politics. Many will vote for him in today's presidential election, and he's likely to win another six-year term by a wide margin.

Critics, however, claim that rather than expanding political rights, Chavez is gradually rolling back democratic freedoms in this oil-rich nation. What he has created, in the view of some political scientists, is a hybrid form of government, a system that falls into a gray area between representative democracy and authoritarian rule.

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