CARACAS: Venezuela’s parliament looked set yesterday to grant President Nicolas Maduro year-long decree powers he says are needed to regulate the economy and stamp out corruption but adversaries view as a thinly veiled power grab.
The National Assembly was expected to give final approval to the controversial Enabling Law at its afternoon session after Maduro garnered the two-thirds, or 99 votes, needed during a preliminary debate last week.
Though winning the powers would hand him a political victory in the run-up to December 8 municipal elections, he still faces a severely distorted economy with embarrassing product shortages and inflation surging to nearly 55 percent.
“Down with prices, down with speculators, down with conspiracies!” Maduro told cheering supporters in a speech late on Monday, explaining his plans to confound the “bourgeoisie” in the same anti-capitalist rhetoric as his predecessor. Maduro, 50, who is staking his rule on preserving the late Hugo Chavez’s socialist legacy, says he has already planned the first two laws he would decree — maybe as soon today. One is intended to limit businesses’ profit margins to 15-30 percent as part of a state “economic offensive” against price-gouging. Another would create a new state body to oversee dollar sales by Venezuela’s currency-control regime.
A small group of opposition demonstrators was arrested on Monday after chaining themselves to the gates of the legislature to protest the Enabling Law. Government supporters were planning to rally outside Congress during yesterday ’s debate.
Maduro’s original justification for the decree powers was to widen a crackdown on corruption, drawing scepticism from critics who say he zealously targets opposition officials while turning a blind eye to the worst of state-linked graft. REUTERS
