Venezuelan Leader’S Win Not Big Enough

With final results in Sunday’s “mega-election” here tabulated Monday, President Hugo Chavez has won an overwhelming personal victory, but his coattails were apparently not quite long enough to pull into Congress the followers needed to guarantee him absolute powers.

Chavez won 59 percent of the vote. But in the races for the National Assembly, pro-Chavez parties won 99 of 165 seats, which fell just short of the two-thirds majority that would have turned the new single-chamber legislature into a rubber stamp.

The two-thirds watershed was crucial to Chavez’s plans to carry out the “peaceful social revolution” he has promised supporters.