The key fact about Sunday's surprise defeat of President Hugo Chávez's proposal to change Venezeula's constitution was the massive abstention of his own supporters. Compared to the seven million votes he received in the presidential election last December, only 4.3 million voted in favour of these changes. Overall turnout was down from 70 to 56 per cent. His opponents rallied some 30 per cent of the electorate to give them a very narrow victory of 50.7 to 49.3 per cent.
This is the first vote Mr Chávez has lost since coming to power in 1998. It proposed a complex package of constitutional changes which he insisted be treated as a unitary whole. They ranged from abolishing presidential term limits that would have allowed him to stand again in 2013, entrenching socialist values, decreasing central bank autonomy, to social changes like reducing the working day from eight to six hours, extending social security to the self-employed and directly funding the community councils he has created as a bulwark for his "Bolivarian revolution".
This combination of legal and social change has a contradictory content and appeal. Mr Chávez acknowledged that in a statement accepting defeat when he said he has attempted too much change too rapidly. Many of his supporters were worried that abolishing the limit on presidential terms would further encourage the authoritarian tendencies already so visible in his populist style of rule. Influential allies broke with him on this issue, saying he should not be trusted on it and that a personality cult is developing alongside plans to merge his supporters into one political party. Parallel attacks on opposition media had a similar resonance, notably among a freshly mobilised student movement.
These proposed changes became more salient because of the recent uneven performance of the Venezuelan economy, notwithstanding the oil boom which has sustained Mr Chávez's social programme. Growing inflation, corruption and shortages of staple products like flour, eggs, milk, cooking oil, meat and sugar have mocked his promises of greater equality and raised questions about whether they will be delivered upon. The proposals to fund community organisations directly could make a difference here, but they depend on local control rather than the centralisation implied by Mr Chávez's own political role.
This setback is a healthy democratic check for Mr Chávez. It may galvanise the fragmented opposition but is not likely to affect the underlying popularity of his programme of change.