Chavez picks fights ahead of tight vote

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez attends a campaign rally in the Andean state of Tachira November 28, 2007.

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has denounced assassination plots and intensified his diplomatic battles to fire up supporters for a tight referendum on Sunday on reforms to expand his powers.

Heading into the first vote of his political career without a commanding lead in opinion polls, Chavez's saber-rattling may help rally voters around the popular leader while diverting attention from some of the package's unpopular measures.

With his moderate supporters worried the constitutional overhaul would give too much power to the self-styled socialist revolutionary, he has campaigned to turn the vote into a black-and-white plebiscite on his rule.

"A vote against the reform is a vote against Chavez," he says of the 69 changes to the constitution that include allowing him to run for reelection indefinitely, to control international reserves and to censor media in an "emergency."

The ally of Cuba and Iran on Wednesday broke off diplomatic ties with neighboring Colombia, accused CNN of instigating his assassination, and his foreign minister threatened to expel a U.S. Embassy official.

"This is undoubtedly a tactic to unite supporters around him and pass everyone else off as traitors to the fatherland," said Maruja Tarre, an international relations expert at Simon Bolivar University in Caracas.

Chavez's tactics differ from previous campaigns when he confidently focused on promoting his oil-financed social programs that have won him support among the majority poor.

He has pushed attention away from the specifics of the reforms in long television appearances. At times, he discusses esoteric issues such as his theory that 19th century Venezuelan liberation hero Simon Bolivar was killed rather than, as the world's history books state, dying of tuberculosis.

He has also published a law to change the OPEC nation's time zone so that Venezuelans will have to move their clocks back 30 minutes, ensuring he dominates the news cycle.

"The more people learn about the reform's content, the more worried they become," said Elsa Cardozo, a foreign relations expert at Venezuela's Central University. "That's why Chavez has to present this as a plebiscite for or against him."

A fragmented, underfunded opposition has struggled to match his heavy media presence.

Chavez took the last nationwide opposition TV station off the airwaves this year and an opposition newspaper complained the state channel dedicates many hours to propaganda for a "Yes" vote compared with a few seconds on the "No" camp.

TIE-BREAKER

Polls show a statistical tie for the leftist leader, who has easily cruised to ballot box victories on average once a year since he first won office in 1998.

Firing up his base could tip the vote in his favor because the result will likely hinge on turnout. Chavez's get-out-the-vote apparatus outguns an opposition whose hopes are mainly pinned on the untested force of a nascent student movement.

Facing the first real possibility of defeat, Chavez on Wednesday severed ties with Colombia to protest President Alvaro Uribe pushing him out of a mediation role with Colombia's leftist guerrillas.

Hours earlier, Chavez accused U.S. news network CNN of promoting his murder by showing his picture with the caption "Who Killed Him?," which CNN called a mistake. He also said a sniper trained a laser on him during a recent march.

His foreign minister went on television waving a document that he said may show a U.S. official conspiring for a "No," vote. If proved, Venezuela will eject him, he said.

Chavez also recently froze ties with Spain in a flap over King Juan Carlos telling him to "shut up" at a summit meeting earlier this month.

David Scott Palmer, a foreign relations professor at Boston University, said the moves were a sign Chavez was concerned about Venezuelans' discomfort with his reforms package.

"I have every confidence that these incidents have been exploited in order to create a distraction at home," he said.