To Avoid Debate Venezuela Lawmakers Loyal to Chavez Swiftly Pass Laws in Session in Park

CARACAS, Venezuela - Meeting in a downtown park to avoid their rivals, lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chavez adopted parliamentary procedures that allow them to swiftly pass several new laws, including one that would tighten restrictions on the media.

The lawmakers, gathering in tents in a poor neighborhood of hard-core Chavez supporters, adopted new debate rules intended to make it more difficult to block legislation supported by the president. Opposition members of Congress said they did not recognize the legitimacy of the vote.

The bickering boded more turmoil for Venezuela, a major oil exporter to the United States convulsed by a brief coup in 2002 and a ruinous general strike earlier this year. It threatened to further delay efforts in Congress to choose election officials who would run a possible referendum on Chavez's presidency.

Under a recent pact brokered by the Organization of American States, Venezuela's opposition may seek to hold a referendum later this year on Chavez's mandate, which runs to 2007.

The president's supporters hold a slim majority in the 165-seat Congress, but they wanted to cut the opposition out of the debate by meeting Friday in a hostile neighborhood. They argued they were forced to do so after a shoving match with opposition lawmakers disrupted a session at the legislative palace Wednesday.

"I ask Venezuelans to applaud these legislators who have assumed their responsibility with courage and continued legislating," Chavez said of Friday's unusual outdoor assembly.

Opposition lawmakers called the session illegal and said it was a Chavez-sponsored attempt to undercut Congress. They tried to convene a separate session at the legislative palace, but the president's supporters ordered the doors locked.

"If the government persists in the progressive dissolution of the legislature, there will be no path left except popular rebellion," said opposition lawmaker Leopoldo Puchi.

The new parliamentary procedure would make it easier to move legislation through a key 21-member committee in Congress that is dominated by the opposition. Chavez supporters claim that the opposition has used this committee to block legislation.

The new media law would ban "rude" or "vulgar" language, prohibit depiction of sex or alcohol or drug use, and ban violence during daytime.

It would also require that 60 percent of programming be produced within Venezuela, half of which would have to be created by "independent producers" approved by the government.

Broadcasters, who tend to oppose the president, say the law will give too much influence to censors hand-picked by Chavez to crack down on the mostly opposition news media.

Venezuela's Media Balk at TV Restrictions*** Ruling party lawmakers defend the proposed law, saying it will protect children from violence and end what they call "selective censorship" by the news media, which they accuse of supporting the opposition. The also contend it will make broadcasters accountable to citizens.

"This project is a weapon to defend us as a people and guarantee public freedoms," said Juan Barreto, a member of the committee which drafted the bill and a journalism professor at the Central University of Venezuela. It upholds "freedom of expression, which doesn't belong only to channels and journalists but also to the people," he said.

Many press rights advocates, however, disagree. They say the law, now before the Chavez-dominated Congress, will allow an increasingly authoritarian government to silence opposition ahead of a possible recall vote on Chavez's presidency. Chavez designed the Law for Social Responsibility in Radio and Television to bring "the news media to its knees," said Victor Ferreres, president of Venevision television.

"We would have to broadcast a blank screen and ignore almost everything that is occurring in the news" to comply with the law, Ferreres claimed.***

I didn't mean he was virtuous, that was tongue in cheek - thus the dictator handle.

Pro-Chávez lawmakers change rules of Congress in outdoor session By PHIL GUNSON [Full Text] CARACAS - Lawmakers loyal to President Hugo Chávez changed the rules of the Venezuelan Congress on Friday at an open-air session that the opposition boycotted as an illegal attempt to ram several controversial measures through the legislature.

Friday's session was held in a public plaza in a working-class part of Caracas regarded as a stronghold of the populist Chávez, despite a requirement that holding any sessions outside the congressional building be approved by a majority vote.

The move came after the opposition prevented the session from taking place inside the Congress building on the grounds that it had been improperly convened by Congress Chairman Francisco Ameliach of Chávez's Fifth Republic Movement.

IN THE OPEN: Government supporters celebrate as pro-Chavez legislators hold a session in Caracas' El Calvario plaza. JUAN BARRETO/AFP

`NEW PHASE'

Chávez praised the outdoor session as ''historic'' and announced that his leftist ''revolution has entered a new phase.'' But some opposition Congress members said they would ask the Supreme Court for a ruling on the legality of the government move.

At the heart of the dispute lies the pro-Chávez legislators' ability to ease through a half-dozen bills -- all regarded by the opposition as authoritarian and potentially repressive -- held up in a parliamentary commission on which the Chávez supporters are a minority.

One is a media bill criticized by human rights organizations as a direct threat to freedom of expression. Another would add an extra 12 judges to the 20-member supreme court, in what the opposition sees as an attempt to ensure a pro-government majority.

The rule change introduced at Friday's session will allow the Congress to vote on the bills. However, the bitterness of the current dispute casts doubt on the continued functioning of the legislature and on the recent agreement brokered by Organization of American States Secretary General César Gaviria, aimed at resolving the country's political crisis.

''The government's actions tend to escalate the conflict,'' said opposition lawmaker Timoteo Zambrano, one of the signatories to the agreement. Another -- congressman Alejandro Armas -- said that if the government's attitude did not change, ``the agreement won't be worth the paper it's written on.''

Chávez dismissed the opposition's complaints as a ''death rattle'' and accused it of attempting ``practically a coup d'état against the national assembly.''

Referring to the recent accord, he said that ``within hours [of signing it] they began to behave in a totally contradictory fashion.''

OPPOSITION'S VIEWS

Several opposition members, however, said the coup was being carried out by the government. They argued that Chávez' slim majority in the legislature, which on some issues is as little as two or three votes, was looking to close down the legislature altogether.

Political analyst Alberto Garrido, author of several books on Chávez, said the issue had little to do with the technicalities of parliamentary rules.

Pointing out that the president had consistently argued for the introduction of ''people's power'' and against representative, liberal democracy, Garrido said Chávez's political project had ``moved to a different level.''

Ameliach announced Friday that such outdoor sessions would be held ``whenever and wherever necessary in order to guarantee the sovereign people [that we are carrying out] our functions as legislators.'' [End]

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