Supreme Court Judge Alejandro Angulo Fontiveros said the so-called "famine theft" clause should be part of a broad penal code reform measure for humanitarian reasons. "This is a guide for judges to avoid injustice," said Mr Fontiveros, who is in charge of drafting the reforms. "They lock up for years a poor person who lives in atrocious misery and what they need is medicine."
But critics say the initiative will fuel crime in a country mired in a recession and where police last year reported an average of 25 murders a day and thousands of robberies a month. Two thirds of Venezuela's 25 million people are poor and a third of those cannot afford their basic food needs despite the nation's huge oil wealth, according to government figures. [end]
Approval of the bill would allow the leftist populist president to get his way in the courts, including blocking or delaying the referendum by filing any number of appeals against the process, without having to violate the constitution to remain in power.
''The judicial system is pyramidal and centralized,'' said Gerardo Blyde, a constitutional lawyer and legislator for the opposition Justice First party, ``The Supreme Court is at the top. Political domination of the court would result in political domination of the entire judiciary.''
The 20-member Supreme Court appears almost evenly divided between Chávez supporters and critics. The justices have occasionally ruled in favor of an opposition movement that claims to have collected some 3.4 million signatures demanding a recall vote against the president.
The Chavistas' push for new rules that would speed up consideration of the bill came at an extremely sensitive time. Venezuela waits on tenterhooks for the National Electoral Council to rule whether the opposition has enough valid signatures in December to force a referendum.
The new rules proposed for the legislative National Assembly, the seventh reform of procedures since Chávez supporters won control of the assembly in 1999, would limit severely the number of speakers in any debate and further hobble the opposition's ability to use procedural delaying tactics.
The new rules can be approved by a simple majority in the 165-member assembly where Chávez's supporters have a five-seat majority.***