In Latin America, Incumbents Increasingly Dominate After four election wins, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is on track to completing at least 20 years in power, and supporters such as street bookseller Cristina Tovar say they're glad to have him in charge. Tovar has signed up to receive new public housing, and the government has installed brightly painted kiosks for her and other vendors. During the campaign, her city was covered in banners and posters emblazoned with the president's image. In a region where military dictators ruled by force for decades, millions of Latin Americans such as Tovar are backing a new crop of leaders extending their rule and dominating power through the ballot box. Already the Western Hemisphere's longest-serving president, Chavez has helped lead the charge of incumbents who have secured constitutional changes and stayed on for multiple terms, overturning provisions that had barred or limited re-election. Chavez won the right to indefinite re-election through a 2009 referendum and earlier this month was elected to another six-year term. "He deserves to win as many times as the people elect him," Tovar said. I adore my president. Ecuador's leader, Rafael Correa, is widely expected to seek a third term in February, which could extend his rule to 10 years, while presidents in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Colombia have also won re-election since 2006. FILE - In this Nov. 30, 2007 file photo, Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez arrives to a rally in support of changes to the nation's constitution in Caracas, Venezuela. After four election wins, Chavez is on track to completing at least 20 years in power. (AP Photo/Rodrigo Abd, File) Close Some critics are uneasy about the health of the democracies in which a single person can remain in office for a generation. Even Chavez's friend and ally, former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, publicly advised the Venezuelan leader last week that a fourth term ought to be enough. Silva, who was hugely popular and served two terms before stepping down in 2010, said in an interview with the Argentine newspaper La Nacion that "Chavez should begin to prepare his succession." Silva said that in Brazil he forbade his political allies from seeking a constitutional amendment to give him a third term. "If I had done it, I would have wanted a fourth term, and then a fifth," Silva said. For democracy, alternation in power is a conquest of humanity, and that is why it should be maintained. Increasingly, though, popular incumbents have appeared virtually unstoppable, despite controversy about their efforts to stay in power. As countries have benefited from a decade of economic growth, many presidents have won the allegiance of the poor and the working class, which for some has translated into a kind of fanatic devotion often seen in the past century, when populist leaders such as Brazil's Getulio Vargas and Argentina's Gen. Juan Peron rode popular support to long years in presidential palaces. Since 1985, 15 of 17 incumbent presidents in Latin America seeking re-election have won, said Javier Corrales, a political science professor at Amherst College in Massachusetts. Only two incumbents have fallen short: Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua in 1990 and Hipolito Mejia in the Dominican Republic in 2004, both amid economic troubles. In Ortega's case, he returned to power in 2007 and won re-election last year, extending his total potential time in office to 15 years. Nicaragua's Supreme Court in 2009 effectively removed term limits. It seems that in Latin America all you really need to know to predict an election is, well, is the incumbent running for office? Corrales said.