Five facts about Chavez after vote defeat

http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSN0337345720071203

FACTBOX: Five facts about Chavez after vote defeat
Mon Dec 3, 2007

(Reuters) - Electoral authorities said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez narrowly lost a referendum over constitutional reforms that would have allowed him to stay in office for as long as he kept winning elections and implement reforms to turn the OPEC nation into a socialist state.

It was the left-wing former soldier's first electoral defeat since he was initially voted into office in 1998.

Here are five facts about Chavez:

* A former lieutenant colonel, Chavez spent much of his later military career conspiring with other leftist officials to overthrow the country's corrupt political order. He led a 1992 coup that failed but made him famous and propelled him toward the presidency.

* Chavez won power at a presidential election in 1998 and took office the following year. Opposition politicians and dissident military officers led a coup against Chavez in 2002 but supporters and loyal soldiers swept him back into power in less than two days. Chavez accuses Washington of supporting the rebellion.

* Chavez won the backing of the poor majority with massive social spending that has included free health and education programs. He also has cultivated support by openly confronting the United States, which he describes as a decadent empire.

* Born to a poor family in Venezuela's plains, Chavez once aspired to be a painter and later dreamed of being a professional baseball player. To this day he explains politics through baseball metaphors, frequently referencing his "pig's tail" curveball.

* Chavez has a folksy Caribbean style and is famous for long-winded speeches that often drag on into the early morning. His weekly Sunday talk show has gone on as long as eight hours and he often mixes jokes and childhood memories with major policy announcements.