Although he was democratically elected as Venezuela's president, Hugo Chavez is a former army officer and often says he heads a "civilian-military" regime. Many officers have senior government jobs. In this and other ways, the armed forces are the mainstay of his "Boli-varian revolution", named after South America's independence hero, which lacks a strong political party. His opponents dream that it will be the army which eventually topples the president, as it almost did in 2002. Loyalists retort that they can dream on. Certainly, the evidence suggests that Mr Chavez now has a tighter grip over the armed forces-but at a price.
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