Just a couple of days after the core of the left-wing south american leaders gathered in Ecuador for Rafael Correa’s inaugaration ceremony, Hugo Chavez has managed to finagle himself dictatorial powers in his own country. The Venezuelan National Assembly voted to give him 18 months of rule-by-decree to implement ‘revolutionary’ reforms.

There was never any question that Chavez had autocratic tendencies and a unbalanced edge to him. Until now those tendencies were accepted by Venezuelans, presumably as a fair trade for a leader who would actually represent the bulk of them instead of elite and foriegn interests. They gave him a majority second term election. That trade-off even seems to have been so appealing that the Venezuelan government has now used that majority to codify an extreme version of it into federal law.

This can’t be a good idea. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, says the inviolable cliche. Chavez has always been his worst enemy, and given carte blanche, it seems inevitable that he will become the caricature of himself that he always threatened to be. His decisions will be overbalanced and dogmatic. He will make terrible mistakes which will de-legitimize the south american ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ he has been the lynch-pin for. No one person should rule a nation. It just can’t work. He’s about to demonstrate why.

Hopefully the Venezuelan people, who are already planning protests, will find the tools to keep him under control internally. If they can’t or don’t, hopefully the other leaders — Morales and Correa among them — can contain or at least get distance from him, and the entire project will not turn into a new name for dictatorship. If it does, it will be a terrible shame and a serious blow to hope in the south.