>>17
Yes, it is troublesome that he rules by decree now. Its only for 18 months though (he has six more years as president if they dont change the constitution which his decree cannot be used for) and he has ruled by decree before and succeded in not turning Venezuela into N Korea. I would say that this deoes not suffice for the tyrant title. US presidents have the executive order power which is kinda close to the decree, are they borderline tyrants?
And I googled and found this nifty list on nationmaster
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/mil_exp_per_of_gdp-military-expenditures-percent-of-gdp . In that venezueala has only 0,9% of gdp in military expenditures, but it is based on CIA world factbook of 2005 so i guess it has increased since then. Its still very much lower than US allies like Saudi Arabia (13%) and Israel (8,75%). I thought Israel was the only democracy in the region, but hey they live in a tyranny! And if the aggresive neighbour excuse will be used i refer to my initial reaction to the arms expenditures of Venezuela in
>>14.