VENEZUELA:BOWING TO popular pressure, Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez has said he will rescind a new intelligence law that critics said would have forced citizens to spy on one another while moving the country toward a police state.
During his Sunday talkshow Aló Presidente, Mr Chávez said he had had second thoughts about the national intelligence and counterintelligence law that he decreed on May 28th. Since then, the law has been under attack from human rights and legal experts as unconstitutional.
"All Venezuelans can be sure that this government will never trample on their liberty, regardless of their politics," Mr Chávez said. "To err is human. We're going to correct this law."
Mr Chávez has the right to make and undo laws by decree, and he previously described the intelligence law as a defensive measure against a possible US invasion. But on Saturday he acknowledged it had generated fear. "Here there is no dictatorship. Here no one is obligated to say anything beyond what they want to say," Mr Chávez said.
He insisted it "wasn't a bad law", but that his opponents had unleashed a "terror campaign" over the internet and on television.
Mr Chávez is facing state and local elections in November, at a time when opposition candidates are gaining strength.
His U-turn on the law probably stems from an assessment of the damage it might have caused his allies in the voting, according to pollster Luis Vicente Leon.
"This was an absolutely pragmatic move," Mr Leon said. "Until November he will avoid anything that will produce a shock or which has the appearance of radicalism that could set people against him."
Radio commentator Nelson Bocaranda said Mr Chávez's change of heart showed that, when "people confront him, he backs down".
"This is a law that just a week ago Chávez was describing as a marvel," Mr Bocaranda said. "What may have really upset him was the comparisons some made with president [ George] Bush's anti-terror law, the patriot act. The very idea that he resembled Bush in some way may have been what convinced him to scrap it."
Now in his 10th year in office, Mr Chávez maintains a 56 per cent approval rating, according to Mr Leon's Datanalisis consulting company. He has slowly consolidated legislative, judicial, military and political control. But he suffered his first defeat at the polls last December when voters rejected a constitutional reform that would have enabled him to run for re-election indefinitely.
Mr Chávez's refusal last year to renew the broadcast licence of the popular RCTV television station also cost him support. And his efforts to overhaul Venezuela's educational system along socialist lines have so far run aground.
The intelligence law is similarly unpopular, arousing opposition from the Catholic Church, students, news media and human-rights groups. Among other features, the law would require people to co-operate in investigations or face jail. Catholic Msgr Baltazar Porras, archbishop of Mérida in southwest Venezuela, said the law put the "wellbeing of the state above that of human beings, of human rights".
"But we can't be too confident about the president's promise to change it. The enabling law gives him the right to make laws without any public discussion or input from legal experts," he said.
Also during his television appearance on Sunday, Mr Chávez issued a surprising appeal to Colombia's largest rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc), to release their hostages, lay down their arms and make peace with the Colombian government. The statement was at odds with his past support for Farc and its cause. - ( LA Times-Washington Post service)