CARACAS, VENEZUELA — President Hugo Chavez presented his long-awaited plan to revise the Venezuelan Constitution on Wednesday, including a proposal to eliminate presidential term limits -- a move critics fear would allow the fiery anti-U.S. leader to further concentrate power in his hands.
In an address to the National Assembly, Chavez laid out 33 changes that he says would incorporate socialist ideology into the constitution that he pushed through in 2000, and redistribute power and resources to the poor and disadvantaged.
Chavez proposed adding one year to the current six-year presidential term and eliminating the two-term limit, allowing him and future presidents to run for reelection indefinitely. He rejected criticism that he was becoming increasingly autocratic.
"It's not that I want to enthrone myself," Chavez said. "This shouldn't surprise anyone. It's done this way in any number of countries.
"There are many lies circulating in the world, about a dictatorship in Venezuela, about a concentration of power in Venezuela," he said. "This is a transfer of power to the people."
The proposal had been expected.
Chavez said his overwhelming electoral victory in December authorized him to lead the country to socialism, and that a law passed by the National Assembly in January giving him power to rule by decree also gave him the authority to direct a reform of the constitution.
The constitutional revisions must be approved by the National Assembly before being put to voters in a referendum at the end of the year.
Especially since a short-lived coup in 2002 that Chavez says the U.S. orchestrated, the Venezuelan leader has been a strident critic of Washington. He regularly belittles President Bush and uses the promise of free or cut-rate oil and refining facilities to counter U.S. influence in Latin America. And he has made friends with countries such as Iran.
Chavez proposed a new "geometry of power" by grouping several Venezuelan states together to create an unspecified number of federal districts with economic and political autonomy. He said creation of these districts would enable him to effectively concentrate resources and frustrate local officials "who pretend to be little presidents."
The president also wants to confer legal status on about 25,000 "communal councils" that he has formed in conjunction with worker cooperatives to own and operate thousands of state-owned assets, including steel plants, toll roads, foreclosed hotels and confiscated farms. The councils and cooperatives are the nuclei of the socialist society that Chavez envisions.
