Considering that, on the second time around, Hugo Chavez can now legitimize his quest for term after term, headline writers the world over are left wondering how to word the Venezuelan president’s victory. Considering that an investigation after the last vote revealed that his government had tried to buy off poor voters, and that the opposition winners of last November have been bullied, intimidated, or prevented from taking office, it seems premature to say that voters awarded Chavez a victory. Some polls had hours extended at the last minute, yet it took a very short amount of time for the National Electoral Council to declare 94 percent of precincts counted. Appearing at the “People’s Balcony” immediately, Chavez declared the beginning of the new “Bolivarian decade” with socialism aplenty and vowed he would run again for president in 2013.

With the acceleration of his agenda, though, that has seen press freedom chipped away and pro-democracy demonstrations met with police and tear gas, those elections are less likely to be free and fair than Sunday’s. So I think that the proper headline today would just be “Chavez gets what he wants” — by whatever means he got it.

(Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)