Reprinted from Caribbean Net News
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Venezuela's Chavez takes sweeping powers

Friday, February 2, 2007

by: Tibisay Soto

CARACAS, Venezuela (AFP): Leftist firebrand President Hugo Chavez branded his US counterpart George W. Bush a "war criminal" Thursday as he assumed sweeping new powers for 18 months.

At a news conference marking his new authority, Chavez, long a thorn in the side of Washington, called for Bush and his designated number two at the State Department, John Negroponte, to "be tried and jailed for the rest of their days."

Chavez signed a law passed Wednesday enabling him to single-handedly transform the institutions of the world's fifth-largest oil exporter.

"We are going to enact it with a red ink and from today it will be in effect - in the name of God and the revolution," Chavez told a news conference, referring to his signature Socialist color.

The new law - which Chavez has dubbed the "mother of all laws" - gives him the power to transform state institutions in 11 key sectors, including the economy, the military, transportation, security and oil.

The measure giving him power to rule by decree was approved Wednesday by the entirely pro-Chavez National Assembly.

Chavez's political opponents have questioned the concentration of power in the hands of one man, but have been unable to block the move since they lack representation in the National Assembly, after boycotting the 2005 elections.

The leftist leader said his priority will be to use his new powers to nationalize power utilities, calling their privatization years ago a "monumental mistake” and the CANTV telephone company.

Chavez also said the law will allow the state-owned oil company PDVSA to gain "at least a 60 percent" controlling stake in four strategic partnerships with foreign firms operating in the oil-rich Orinoco belt in eastern Venezuela.

He set May 1 as the deadline to complete negotiations.

The foreign firms "will accept this because we will continue being partners. But if they don't agree, they are completely free to leave," Chavez said.

An ally of Cuba's communist leader Fidel Castro, Chavez, in power since 1999 and reelected in December for a six-year term, has pledged to reform the constitution to let presidents seek indefinite re-election.

Chavez was given the same type of sweeping powers in 2001, when he decreed nearly 50 laws regulating land use, fisheries and oil and gas. The laws touched off months of protests and strikes.

Prior presidents have enjoyed similar powers, although they were limited by the 1961 constitution to a 12-month period. That constitution was rewritten in 1999 after Chavez was first elected in 1998.

Proponents of the decree powers argued they were necessary to accelerate Chavez's "Socialism for the 21st Century" program.

The fiery Venezuelan president's jabs at the United States came after Negroponte, the incoming US deputy secretary of state, said Tuesday that Chavez was a threat to Latin American democracy.

"He has been trying to export his kind of radical populism, and I think that his behavior is threatening to democracies in the region," Negroponte, the current US spy chief, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee at his confirmation hearing to become Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's deputy.

"Mr. Negroponte, he is a criminal ... of war and now the other criminal, who is Bush, has nominated him," Chavez said at the beginning of his news conference.

Negroponte "to obtain his post said he was working to prevent Venezuela from being a dictatorship. Mr. Negroponte, if you want to 'come in,' here we are waiting for you and your war criminals, we're not afraid," Chavez said.

"The president of the United States should resign if he had any dignity," he said, adding that Bush had "neither the political nor the moral capacity in any way to govern the country."

He blamed both US politicians for causing Iraq war deaths and damaging the environment.

"The two are criminals. Bush and Negroponte and the mafia that enthroned itself in power in the United States should be tried and jailed for the rest of their days," he said.

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