Today, 12 years after winning his first election for what at the time was meant to be a single five-year presidential term, Chávez has become a master of the game, writing and rewriting the rules, and testing the willingness of his followers to believe they still live in a democratic country. There is no certainty, however, that Venezuelans will continue to accept that claim. 

Just last week, Chávez obtained the right to rule by decree, allowing him to circumvent the opposition's ability to block him in the parliament. Now, at a time when Venezuela is struggling with a stubborn economic recession and a spiraling wave of violence, the Venezuelan people will find it much more difficult to believe their country is a democracy. Ultimately, that could pose a severe challenge to Chávez's plans to stay in power for the foreseeable future, because Venezuelans, a new poll reveals, care deeply about democratic values.

The charismatic Chávez is an admirer of non-elected revolutionaries such as Fidel Castro. But at some point in his career, he discovered that democracy offered him a path to power burnished with a fortifying coat of legitimacy. When he ran for president and won the majority of the vote in 1998, no one could dispute that he had earned the right to govern Venezuela. Since then, however, Chávez has written, rewritten and revised the constitution, mostly to extend his stay in power. But even as he attempted to up-end the Venezuelan economic, social and political systems, Chávez always tried to at least appear as though he was following the rules of democracy. He has used his power to rig the system, to intimidate and even imprison his critics, and to shut down much of the opposition media. But just as democratic legitimacy has strengthened Chávez's rule, over the course of Chávez's tenure in office, the appeal of democracy has grown, potentially complicating his own plans.

Democracy, as a system of government, was not particularly popular back when, as a colonel in the Venezuelan armed forces, Chávez attempted to forcibly overthrow the civilian government of then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez. Since then, however, most people in Latin America have come to support democracy. And that is especially true in Venezuela. 

Every year, the respected polling firm Latinobarometro surveys the region. This year, it interviewed 19,000 people in 18 countries. Almost everywhere, respondents said that democracy is their preferred system of government. In Venezuela, a stunning 88 percent now say that democracy, with all its faults, is the best choice. But even more troubling for Chávez is that 78 percent of Venezuelan respondents agreed with the statement that, "Without a congress there can be no democracy." 

In Venezuela today, and for the next 18 months, parliament has been effectively eliminated. The "Enabling Law" allowing the president to bypass the legislature was approved by the lame-duck parliament on Dec. 17, just in time to prevent a much-less-friendly legislature from taking the baton this January, replacing what has until now been a rubber-stamp National Assembly. The new assembly will still have had a Chavista majority, but not the two-thirds majority he would need for constitutional amendments or other key legislation. The 18 months of rule-by-decree will give Chávez enough time to set the stage for the next presidential election in 2012. 

When Chávez took office in 1999, he was limited to a single term, set to expire in 2004. But Chávez wrote a new constitution creating the new "Bolivarian Republic," whose president would be allowed to serve a maximum of two six-year terms. Chávez ran again and won two more presidential elections in 2000 and 2006. To avoid stepping down in 2012, he proposed a constitutional amendment, approved last year, removing term limits.

As Chávez moved the country along the leftist path he called 21st Century Socialism, his opponents found it difficult to settle on a strategy to fight back. They attempted a coup in 2002, which was reversed, and then they boycotted elections, which only left them without a voice in the National Assembly. The opposition remained deeply divided and incapable of stopping Chávez's radical economic and political changes.

That, however, began to change just as the country's troubles escalated. By the time voters went to the polls to elect a new National Assembly in September, Venezuelans had much to gripe about. The opposition had reason to feel hopeful.

The economy was in trouble. The cost of living was soaring, while crime was making life frightening across all socio-economic strata. And the prospects for improvement looked dismal. Chávez had expropriated hundreds of private companies and taken over millions of acres of land, making investing in Venezuela so dangerous that practically nobody wanted to risk sinking capital into the country. Foreign direct investment, according to the World Bank, has completely collapsed since Chávez took power. In 1997, the year before his first election, investors pumped more than $6 billion into the Venezuelan economy. By 2009, investors were taking their money out as fast as they could, with net foreign direct investment now a negative $3.1 billion. 

With most Latin American countries roaring out of the Great Recession and posting impressive economic growth, Venezuela has remained mired in a painful contraction, with no sign of economic growth returning any time soon. Oil exports, which account for 90 percent of the government's income, have declined despite oil prices having risen, because underinvestment and mismanagement by politically appointed employees put a damper on petroleum production. Inflation is approaching 30 percent, one of the highest rates in the world, and the crime rate seems to be growing out of control. The government has stopped publishing murder rates, but experts believe that Caracas is now the world's most-dangerous city.

Corruption figures paint a similarly depressing picture. Transparency International found Venezuela to be the most-corrupt country in the hemisphere, ranking it 164th out of 178 worldwide. Venezuelan officials called the report "irrational." The World Bank report, "Doing Business 2011," an annual analysis of global business conditions, concluded that Venezuela has the worst business climate in all of Latin America and one of the worst in the world, ranking 172 out of 183 countries worldwide. 

Against this backdrop, the opposition put on a strong performance in the September legislative elections. But despite receiving 51 percent of the popular vote, opposition legislators ended up with just 40 percent of the seats. The president's supporters maintained their majority, and Chávez declared victory. But the vote was in fact a major victory for the anti-Chávez forces -- and Chávez knew it. The president had lost his rubber-stamp congress and his two-thirds majority. 

The opposition braced for the counterattack, and it came with "Enabling Law," which Chávez said he needed to deal with the aftermath of major floods. Now Chávez does not have to worry about a National Assembly that may not go along with all his wishes. And he has managed, arguably through democratic means, to grant himself much greater powers. For the next 18 months, the Venezuelan president will be able to rule under conditions not very different from those he might have acquired had his military coup succeeded in 1992. 

The difference, however, is that he has now convinced the Venezuelan public that an undemocratic government lacks legitimacy, an argument the opposition will be happy to take up in 2012.