VENEZUELA: Socialism Through the Side Door

By Humberto Márquez Reprint | | Print |

Humberto Márquez

CARACAS, Aug 5 2008 (IPS) - On the last night of the 18-month period he was granted by Congress to legislate by decree, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez handed down 26 laws that, according to his critics, usher in many of the socialist-style reforms that voters rejected in a referendum on proposed constitutional amendments last December.

The new laws, which were published Monday in the official gazette, expand support for small and medium businesses, strengthen cooperatives, introduce changes in the armed forces, create neighbourhood militias and put a priority on food security. They also cover areas like housing, railways and tourism.

In January 2007, after Chávez was reelected, he said he would speed up the country’s progress towards “21st century socialism”. Congress, whose 167 members were at that time all supporters of the president due to an opposition boycott of the last parliamentary elections, granted him special legislative powers for a year and a half.

Since then, the president has decreed laws that allowed him to nationalise oil, power and telecoms companies. But he concentrated most of the changes he was seeking, such as the right to indefinite re-election and modifications in the armed forces, in a proposed constitutional reform.

In August 2007 he proposed amendments to 33 articles in the 1999 constitution, which Congress expanded to 67 in the constitutional reform that was put to a public referendum in December 2007. The reform was voted down by a margin of 51 to 49.

Vice President Ramón Carrizález explained that many of the laws decreed by Chávez on Jul. 31 had been redrafted by councils of ministers since voters turned down the constitutional amendments. “Another 16 draft laws are still pending, and will be sent to the legislature,” he added.

Constitutional lawyer Rafael Chavero told IPS that “the president is committing fraud against the constitution because he evaded the principle that it establishes repeatedly in some 20 different articles that refer to citizen participation in the drafting of laws. And he is ridiculing parliament, which gave him a blank check that he didn’t use until the last minute.”

But jurist Carlos Escarrá, one of the leaders of the governing United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), said in contrast that “the president acted within the timeframe given him by the legislature, and his actions are in line with the constitution and the law that granted him special powers.”

Chávez said in his weekly radio and TV programme on Sunday that “these laws are to benefit the people, they are laws of liberation. The opposition’s laws are unpatriotic. I received special powers that were in effect until Jul. 31, and whoever doesn’t like one of these laws can go to the Supreme Court.”

Carrizález dismissed the opposition’s criticisms, saying that “many of these laws comply with a demand voiced by the opposition during last year’s campaign, when they argued that it was not necessary to amend the constitution to introduce legal reforms. They also address needs like giving a boost to small and medium companies or streamlining administrative procedures.”

One of the laws, which strengthens the “people’s economy,” establishes a “community-based socio-production model” for organised communities, that recognises collective work and the production, distribution and consumption brigades made up of volunteers who are termed “prosumers” (producer–consumers).

The laws also provide a legal framework for bartering, through direct or non-equivalent exchange of goods, services or know-how. In addition, they grant recognition to “community currencies”, which are based on experiments carried out in poor parts of the country.

So-called “endogenous development hubs,” centres set up to reach local cooperatives through government health or food distribution programmes, are also given legal status.

But Juan Manuel González, head of the Fedecámaras business chamber, one of the most vocal and active elements of the opposition, said that as each business sector carefully studies the laws that apply to them, they are finding new developments “that increasingly tighten the cordon around the private sector.”

For example, if the government considers an asset to be of use to the public, it will be able to provisionally seize or occupy it, while awaiting the results of the expropriation trial. This point was included in December’s failed constitutional reform.

The new law on food security states that national production must be favoured in this country that imports more than 60 percent of the food consumed.

“Food security planning” is to be jointly managed by producers, community councils and other forms of “people’s organisations,” and the national sectoral councils that set conditions for production and prices will be replaced by “agrarian assemblies” in which business associations will also take part.

The state must “guarantee strategic reserves” of food products and “facilitate swapping and bartering,” says the law, which also establishes a corps of “agricultural volunteers,” who will include public employees and members of cooperatives and other organised communities.

The law aimed at streamlining bureaucratic procedures states that every public agency or body must design and present a plan to cut red tape.

The new law on banks (made up of more than 500 articles) and financing for agriculture does not contain many novelties, according to the initial reading by experts.

But the decree on the armed forces is expected to give rise to lengthy public debate, because it creates a fifth branch of the military, the National Bolivarian Militia, which will be added to the army, navy, air force and national guard, each of which will now be named “Bolivarian” as well (for South American independence leader Simón Bolívar).

The new militias will consist of civilian volunteers who will work with the government-promoted neighbourhood-based “community councils”.

This worries the opposition, who see them as “armed adversaries,” because “the current political dynamics have led the term ‘Bolivarian’ to be seen as a synonym of ‘Chavista’,” said former socialist leader Teodoro Petkoff, an outspoken critic of the Chávez administration.

In addition, the armed forces command is separated from the Defence Ministry, which will now only be in charge of administrative questions, and put in the hands of a pyramidal structure headed up by the commander-in-chief, the president.

A new rank is also created, that of major general.

The PSUV and its allies announced that they would defend the new laws on all fronts. The exception to that was Oscar Figuera, secretary general of the small Communist Party, who said “we are not familiar with the content of these laws.”

Political and business leaders in the opposition and anti-Chávez media outlets, meanwhile, argue that what the president has done is reform the constitution in practice, despite voters’ rejection of the modifications in the December referendum.

“With this ambush, the government is trying to smuggle in the rejected constitutional reform,” said octogenarian Luis Miquilena, a former Chávez ally and key aide.

Manuel Rosales, the opposition candidate who lost to Chávez in the 2006 presidential elections, said “these are pirate laws.” Fedecámaras leader González called the decrees “a fraud for democracy.”

While Chávez was on an official visit to Buenos Aires, where he met Monday with Presidents Cristina Fernández of Argentina and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, the leaders of Venezuela’s opposition parties began to campaign against the new laws, which they may even seek to overthrow by referendum.