Chávez says he has no plans to eliminate

individuals' private property in Venezuela

Bloomberg News

CARACAS — President Hugo Chávez says that there are no plans to eliminate private property in Venezuela even as the country overhauls its eight-year-old Constitution this year in line with his vision for "21st century socialism."

"The Bolivarian revolution, I repeat, doesn't exclude, prohibit or have any kind of plan to eliminate private property," Chávez said recently, referring to his program to transform Venezuela in honor of the 19th-century South American revolutionary, Simon Bolivar.

While preserving private property, a revised Constitution would also protect "social" and "collective" property, like the country's large oil reserves, Chávez said, without giving further details.

Constitutional changes, to be drafted by a presidential committee and submitted for public approval in a national referendum this year, are the first of "five engines" of change Chávez has outlined for Venezuela since beginning his second, six-year term in office on Jan. 10.

He has since used decree powers to nationalize the country's largest telephone and electricity companies and seize a larger stake in foreign oil joint ventures. His government "temporarily expropriated" two meat-processing plants on Friday, further raising concern that private property rights would soon disappear.

"Private property isn't the only kind of property," Chávez said Saturday. "When the conquistadors arrived here by sea, there was social property, collective property, and everyone was the owner of everything."

"This is a debate that should deepen," he said.

Chávez declared that methods for measuring poverty rates, used elsewhere in the world, "aren't valid in Venezuela," which officially reported 39.7 percent household poverty at the end of 2005, according to the National Statistics Institute.

Chávez also questioned the central bank's method of measuring inflation, which reached 18.4 percent last month, the highest annual rate in Latin America. The move echoes his vows to reduce the bank's autonomy, which he has called a "neo-liberal" and "perverse" concept unsuited to his vision for Venezuela.

He asked last month for constitutional changes to grant him greater access to the country's international currency reserves, in order to finance social programs in case of a budget shortfall. Current law allows him to use reserves only in excess of $29 billion; the bank currently holds $36 billion.

Venezuela's current Constitution, drafted and approved by referendum shortly after Chávez first took office in 1999, introduced new education, health care and environmental rights and eliminated the country's bicameral legislature, creating a single assembly now entirely controlled by Chávez supporters.

Revisions Chávez proposed this year would ban the sale of state assets, designate more property as "communal," and eliminate limits on the number of terms a president may serve, allowing for his re-election indefinitely.

Chávez dismissed U.S. President George W. Bush's planned trip to Brazil, Uruguay, Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala next month as a diplomatic offensive designed to contain him and "destined for the abyss of defeat."

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