1.   In addition, he has twisted long-standing civil liberties protections to expand his own authoritarian powers and those of the police.

2.   Opposition leaders claim Chavez has accumulated authoritarian power through elections that replaced a discredited, opposition-controlled congress and supreme court.

3.   Communists, who together with socialists and agrarians tried to block the measure, said the law was a step toward establishing authoritarian power.

4.   He says he is reforming a corrupt and elitist political system, but the middle class-based opposition accuses him of accumulating authoritarian powers.

5.   He used the authoritarian powers to crush leftist guerrilla groups.

6.   Opponents accuse the former army paratrooper of amassing authoritarian powers in his movement to throw out a discredited political class.

7.   The opposition, supported by the middle class, accuses him of accumulating authoritarian powers in his efforts to overhaul a corrupt political system.

8.   The opposition, mainly from the middle classes, say those efforts were a veiled attempt at amassing authoritarian powers.

9.   The referendum has been fiercely protested by opponents in parliament, who accuse Lukashenko of already holding authoritarian powers.