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Consider the case of Hugo Chávez.
As a candidate for president of oil-rich Venezuela, he vowed to eradicate corruption and the poverty that afflicted 80 percent of the nation's 24 million people and was overwhelmingly chosen in clean elections three years ago. Then, in a series of election and referendum victories he revamped the Constitution, Congress and the courts and extended his own four-year term to 2006.
After this, he watched his popularity fall from 80 percent to 25 percent. The country's finances have been coming apart while unemployment, crime and inflation have been going up.
The president's combative rhetoric has alienated virtually every sector of the country's society with his attacks on the news media and Roman Catholic Church leaders, his refusal to consult with business leaders, and his failed attempt to assert control over labor groups.
As a consequence of all this, both the country's largest labor group, one-million strong, and its largest business association called for an indefinite general strike. This means that both the executives of the state oil enterprise and its rank-and-file workers have been on strike for six weeks to protest the president's appointments to top company posts.
What happened when Chávez reacted by ordering the National Guard troops and civilian gunmen, including rooftop snipers, to break down a 150,000-strong opposition demonstration in the country's capital? Fourteen people were killed and 110 wounded and, as the bloodbath unfolded, Chávez then ordered five television stations off the air, charging they were inciting violence.
What happened next was that three military chiefs quietly walked into the presidential palace, pushed the president with a finger and he tumbled over.
"The president was asked to resign from his post and he accepted," Gen. Lucas Rincón told a news conference broadcast live on national television.
"Being a friend of his for many years, I advised him to resign and allow Venezuelans to avoid a bigger bloodbath," said Gen. Francisco Uson, who until Thursday served as Chávez's finance minister.
The announcement came after a succession of senior officers from all four branches of the military-army, air force, navy and National Guard-appeared on television calling for the president to resign.
At 3 a.m. Friday, former paratrooper Chávez, wearing military fatigues and a red beret-as he did when he led a failed 1992 coup against then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez-was taken from the Miraflores Palace to Fort Tiuna, an army base in Caracas, the nation's capital. He is being held there while investigators decide what charges he could face for Thursday's violence, said army commander Gen. Efraín Vásquez Velasco.
Pedro Carmona, head of Fedecámaras, Venezuela's largest business association, announced he would head a transitional government to be installed later that day. He also announced an immediate end to a general strike called against Chávez.
Carmona, who had been one of Chávez's staunchest opponents, said his leadership of the transition government that would lead the country toward free elections had been agreed to "in consensus" with civilian society and the armed forces. Meanwhile, thousands of Chávez opponents celebrated overnight, waving flags, blowing whistles and jamming a main highway in Caracas.
With the traditional political parties in disarray after a succession of corrupt administrations, in 1997 Chávez created his Fifth Republic Movement and in 1998 launched his successful presidential campaign with the support of minority leftist political parties.
He alienated Washington with visits to Libya and Iraq, his close friendship with Cuba's Fidel Castro, and his "neutral" stand in Colombia's war against leftist guerillas turned into common bandits. And he angered the Bush administration by criticizing U.S. bombing in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Chávez became a price hawk within the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, and in 2000 hosted the cartel's second-ever summit since its founding in 1960. In part due to Chávez's urging, oil prices rebounded from lows of $10 a barrel. But businesses responded to his harsh rhetoric by sending billions of dollars abroad.
Since Chávez came to power, Venezuela became Cuba's No. 1 trading partner at more than $1 billion a year. Furthermore, hundreds of Cubans are in Venezuela on sports and cultural exchanges, while scores of Venezuelans are receiving free health care in Cuba.
Chávez's departure is a big political blow for Castro's regime as the Venezuelan president was an admirer and ally of the Cuban dictator and spoke up for Castro both within the region and further afield.
Stunned by the downfall of its strongest ally in Latin America, Cuba blamed Chávez's resignation on a "counter-revolutionary" plot by the "subversive" rich.
The turn of events in Venezuela threw into doubt an important economic supply-line Caracas was giving Havana under Chávez with the sale of 53,000 barrels a day of oil, one half of the fuel-short island's oil imports, part of which has preferential financing arrangements.
"Culminating the counter-revolutionary plans frequently denounced by President Hugo Chávez himself, a conspiracy headed by the economically-dominant classes, in collusion with powerful media at their service and corrupt political intrigues, brought about the defeat of the Venezuelan president," Cuba's Communist Party's Granma daily said.
Friday's front-page Granma article shocked ordinary Cubans who had received little inkling of the seriousness of the Venezuelan crisis due to the generally low-profile and pro-Chávez coverage of Venezuela by state-run media.
One thing should be said, however, about rulers like Venezuela's Hugo Chávez: they do right by those of us in the chancy work of crystal-gazing. Last February we said here:
"Political polarization in Venezuela is developing so swiftly that some kind of change appears to be inevitable. How it might occur is difficult to say. A military coup appears unlikely, but it is not unthinkable that, given his messianic personality, if the popular rejection continues to mount Chávez might even abandon the presidency of his own will if he came to feel that Venezuelans 'don't deserve' him."
Fourteen weeks later that's what he did. He hasn't said yet Venezuelans "don't deserve" him, but he will as soon as he has a chance.
Claudio Campuzano (claudio-campuzano@hotmail.com) is U.S, correspondent for the Latin American newsweekly Tiempos del Mundo and editorial page editor of the New York daily Noticias del Mundo. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com