Confident Chavez says foes to cry fraud in vote

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said he expects to win Sunday's constitutional reform referendum on scrapping term limits by 10 percentage points, but said his opponents will cry fraud and promote violence if they lose.

The Venezuelan leader faces the toughest vote of his career, with recent polls showing at best a technical tie on December 2 for the leftist former soldier who has cruised to ballot box victories about once a year since his first 1998 election.

"Next Sunday I expect we will win ... with a minimum lead of 10 points and a ceiling of 20 points," Chavez said during a meeting with businessmen late on Monday.

"But we are all sure even if we beat them by 10 points, or 20 or 50 they will say we stole the election and will try to destabilize (the government)," Chavez said. "They are already trying."

Violence has marred the brief referendum campaign, with one man shot dead on Monday as he tried to pass through a line of opposition demonstrators. The shooting followed weeks of protests and clashes in which some were wounded by gunfire.

The constitutional reform would end presidential term limits, boost executive powers during emergencies, give the president direct control over currency reserves and expand social security benefits as part of Chavez's campaign to create a socialist state.

Opposition political parties, university students, Roman Catholic Church leaders and rights groups call the reform a power grab by an increasingly authoritarian leader.

Interior Minister Pedro Carreno late on Monday said authorities raided homes and in various locations impounded weapons he said were linked to opposition efforts to destabilize the weekend vote.

Carreno accused opposition leaders of planning to release an exit poll showing the "No" vote winning as a way of later crying fraud if voters approve the referendum changes.

Opposition leaders accused the government of vote-rigging in a 2004 referendum that Chavez won by a landslide, but never provided evidence of foul play. International observers also called the vote clean.

Chavez still has broad support of the country's majority poor who back his social projects financed by the OPEC nation's abundant oil revenues. He has promoted his self-styled revolution as a counterweight to U.S. free market policies.

(Reporting by Ana Isabel Martinez and Enrique Andres Pretel, Writing by Brian Ellsworth, Editing by Patrick Markey and Vicki Allen)