In what has been seen as an attempt to ward off too many polemical issues flying around his political career, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez recently promised to annul the controversial ‘Law on the National Intelligence and Counterintelligence System’ or the ‘Spy Law’ which decreed that anyone refusing to work as informants for intelligence agencies would have to face a four-year prison term. “I think it’s best to annul this law and make another one.

“This is a government that rectifies”, President Chavez is quoted as saying during a televised address last Tuesday. The Venezuelan president said that the country’s National Assembly would draft a new version of the law at the earliest. A commission to revise the law and amend the controversial clause has already been created.
The controversy surrounding the current law erupted immediately after its enactment on May 28. The new law envisages a replacement for the country’s intelligence offices - the Disip Secret Police and Military Intelligence Directorate. Instead, four new agencies, two under the supervision of Justice Ministry and two under military command would be created. But what disturbed the people is the above said clause in Article 16 that envisages punishment for non-co-operation with intelligence agencies. Punishment ranges from imprisonment to monetary penalty, depending upon the level of non-co-operation.

Critics, human rights groups and the still powerful Roman Catholic Church in the country condemned the move as an attempt to impose a police state on them. The failure of the law lies in Chavez’s apparent failure to present the law as an attempt to crunch the increasing presence of CIA in the country, something which he has always been wary of. According to Chavez, the law would have prevented military rebellions like the 2002 coup that briefly removed him from power. But a majority of people consider it as a move to quell anti-government movements gaining strength in the country.

It is natural for any head of the state to pivot a seemingly disturbing law, especially when the state and local elections are due. But in his case, the November state and local elections are not very important than the planned nationwide referendum to be held in 2010 that devices an end to presidential term limits. This, he hopes, will enable him to stay as the head of the state for an unlimited number of terms. It should be remembered that Chavez has not fully recovered from the shock of a defeated national referendum held in December with the same views in mind. The defeat of the constitutional referendum has apparently cast shadows over the political career of the hitherto unquestioned Bolivarian leader of Venezuela.

‘Guerilla Movement is History’

The current decision to backtrack from the Spy Law is supplemented by another major reversal in his stance on left rebels - the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia People’s Army (FARC-EP) - operating in neighbouring Colombia. About five months ago, he called upon the world to support the leftist guerrilla movement there. Justifying his stance, he expounded the idea of a Grand Colombia encompassing Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama, and considered the rebels as pilots of this vision. However, he found no support to his call to remove the rebel FARC-EP from the world’s terror groups list. He was even forced to resort to certain damage-control measures after Colombia claimed that documents retrieved from a seized laptop from the rebels suggested a surreptitious link between the Venezuelan government and the rebels. In order to save his face from the embarrassment caused by the activities of FARC-EP, which resorted to holding about 45 high-profile political prisoners as hostages including former Colombian presidential candidate Ingrid Betancourt (Ms Betancourt was later rescued by a joint tactical operation of CIA and Colombian Forces), Chavez tried to broker a peace deal between the rebels and the Colombian government. Though some of the hostages were released due to his efforts in January and February, negotiations collapsed after a Colombian strike on a rebel camp across the border in Ecuador angered the rebels. Subsequently, Chavez withdrew from the negotiations.

However, in a recent announcement, Chavez said that an “armed guerrilla movement is out of place” in Latin America, adding that Guerilla movement was “history”. He is also learnt to have urged the FARC rebels to end the deadlock by releasing the hostages. Earlier this year, Chavez also withdrew a decision to overhaul school textbook after mounting criticism from teachers and parents who accused him of trying to indoctrinate their children with revolutionary socialist ideals. The seemingly serene attitude of the leader continues to vex both critics and political analysts equally.