Tuesday 09 January 2007
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President Chavez - London |
VENEZUELAN President Hugo Chavez declared on Monday that he would nationalise electricity and telecoms companies as part of a drive to turn Venezuela into a socialist country.
Mr Chavez, who will be sworn in on Wednesday for a third term that runs until 2013, announced the nationalisation plan as a key step in a series of radical changes.
"All of that which was privatised, let it be nationalised," he said, referring to "all of those sectors in an area so important and strategic for all of us, as is electricity."
"The nation should recover its ownership of strategic sectors," the president stressed.
The nationalisation appears likely to target Electricidad de Caracas, which is owned by US corporation AES, and CA Nacional Telefonos de Venezuela (CANTV), the country's largest publicly traded company.
Mr Chavez also said that he wanted a constitutional amendment to strip the Central Bank of its autonomy and would soon ask the National Assembly, which is solidly controlled by his pro-Chavez legislators, to give him greater powers to approve "a set of revolutionary laws" by presidential decree.
"We're moving towards a socialist republic of Venezuela and that requires a deep reform of our national constitution," Mr Chavez said in the televised address after swearing in a new cabinet.
"We're heading towards socialism and nothing and no-one can prevent it."
Mr Chavez had promised to take a more radical turn towards socialism before he was re-elected by a wide margin last month.
The president, who was first elected in 1998, has progressively acted to remake Venezuelan society, rewriting laws, setting up state-funded co-operatives and starting a land reform programme that has turned over large swathes of ranch lands to poor farmers.
"The eight-year transition phase is ending and we're entering a new era - the Simon Bolivar national plan, Bolivarian socialism," he told cheering supporters, referring to south American independence hero Simon Bolivar.
Mr Chavez referred to the ideas of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin at other points in his speech and said: "I'm very much of Trotsky's line - the permanent revolution."
The president also said that lucrative oil projects in the River Orinoco basin involving foreign oil companies "should become the property of the nation," adding that any vestiges of private control over the energy sector should be undone.
However, he did not appear to rule out all private investment in the oil sector.
Since last year, his government has sought to form state-controlled "mixed companies" with BP, Exxon Mobil, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Total and Statoil to upgrade heavy crude in the Orinoco.
Original Source Morning Star
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