VENEZUELA: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez reforms-- including scrapping presidential term limits-- go to electoral court for December referendum

Chavez's controversial proposed constitutional reforms which scrap term limits, increase his power and promote social property over individual property move to the electoral court to be prepared for a referendum. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's constitutional reforms-- including his proposal to scrap term limits-- headed to the electoral court on Friday (November 02) to be prepared for a December 2 referendum which is likely to be approved. The step came after Congress, which has no opposition members, passed the package just one day after violent protests rocked Caracas. Polls show many Venezuelans oppose centralizing presidential power but favour sweeteners the socialist leader has included in the package, such as reducing the workday to six hours and giving social security benefits to unregistered taxi drivers. The opposition, the Roman Catholic Church, university students and rights groups have denounced the scores of proposed changes to the constitution as an authoritarian power grab by a man who has vowed to rule for decades. Chavez supporters in Congress said the package addressed the needs of poor people that governments before Chavez had neglected for decades. "The project deepens the humanist value, including that 80 percent of the peoples who are excluded and that is now the revolutionary government's priority," said National Assembly President Cilia Flores. With only a month available for a debate on the measures, the president easily should win a vote that mainly will be a reflection of his popularity among the majority poor who benefit from his spending of the OPEC nation's oil bonanza on clinics, schools and food subsidies, pollsters say. The package also would strip the central bank of its autonomy, give Chavez control over international reserves, empower authorities to detain citizens without charge and open the way to censoring the media in so-called political emergencies. It also introduces new legal concepts such as "social property" and "collective property," promoting them above individual interests as part of a constitutional goal of creating a socialist economy.

ITN Source | November 3, 2007

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