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]