Venezuela Congress OKs lifting Chavez term limits

CARACAS (Reuters) - Congress passed President Hugo Chavez's proposal to scrap presidential term limits Friday in a package of constitutional changes that Venezuelans are likely to approve in a referendum next month.

Pro-Chavez lawmakers, who dominate the legislature, shouted "yes, yes," and chanted the president's political slogan "Fatherland, socialism or death" in approving the measures.

Polls show many Venezuelans oppose centralizing presidential power but favor sweeteners the socialist leader has included in the package, such as reducing the workday to six hours and giving social security benefits to unregistered taxi drivers.

The opposition, the Roman Catholic Church, university students and rights groups have denounced the scores of proposed changes to the constitution as an authoritarian power grab by a man who has vowed to rule for decades.

Protests against the proposal have turned violent.

Wall Street is concerned that the package will further chill investment, especially after the anti-U.S. president decreed a raft of nationalizations earlier this year with the vow of making the major oil exporter a socialist state.

The package also would strip the central bank of its autonomy, give Chavez control over international reserves, empower authorities to detain citizens without charge and open the way to censoring the media in so-called political emergencies.

In speech after speech, Chavez's supporters in Congress said the package addressed the needs of poor people that governments before Chavez had neglected for decades.

But the proposal has caused a rare rift in official ranks.

"Today is a black page in the history of this country and its democracy," said lawmaker Ismael Garcia, whose party has broken with Chavez over the plan it says is a step back toward the Soviet era.

With only a month available for a debate on the measures, the president easily should win a vote that mainly will be a reflection of his popularity among the majority poor who benefit from his spending of the OPEC nation's oil bonanza on clinics, schools and food subsidies, pollsters say.

Still, government officials are working to mobilize Chavez supporters because of worries abstention could be high.

CHAVEZ, CASTRO AND COLLECTIVES

The referendum package introduces new legal concepts such as "social property" and "collective property," promoting them above individual interests as part of a constitutional goal of creating a socialist economy.

Without the law change, the man who calls Cuban leader Fidel Castro his mentor would leave office in 2013.

Chavez, who has been in power since 1999, won a landslide re-election last December and says he needs more time to create a socialist state that can help counter U.S. "imperialism."

Wall Street economists fear that as he campaigns for the referendum he will increase spending in a nation where rampant inflation is a sign the economy is overheating with periodic shortages in staples such as milk.

In recent weeks, he has hiked teachers' and medics' pay up to 60 percent.

"(The) reforms coupled with the weakness of personal property rights in Venezuela provide massive disincentive to any foreign investment in this country," Bear Stearns said.

Some traditional Chavez voters worry about his handling of the economy, which is increasingly dependent on high international oil prices.

"I don't agree with this reform," Carlos, a 54-year-old fisherman who used to vote with the president, said in the Caribbean coastal village of Puerto Maya.

"Chavez has made a mistake. He wants to turn Venezuela into Cuba and that's wrong," he said, without giving his last name. "If he carries on like this, he's going to fall from power." (Additional reporting by Fabian Andres Cambero and Ana Isabel Martinez)