Making socialism official

Hugo Chávez's new constitution

The Catholic church calls it "morally unacceptable". Many lawyers and human-rights organisations say it violates fundamental freedoms. Even some of the government's allies have spoken of "constitutional fraud". But none of this looks likely to hinder Hugo Chávez's sweeping reform of Venezuela's constitution. The National Assembly was set to approve the changes on November 2nd for submission to a referendum a month later.

Mr Chávez says that the reform, which follows his victory in a presidential election last December, is imperative to entrench his "revolution". As unveiled by him in August, the reform affected fewer than a tenth of the 350 articles in the 1999 constitution (which the president himself inspired). But the assembly has added a further 36 articles.

Many of the changes expand presidential power and weaken the remaining institutional checks on it. But officials argue that the creation of grass-roots "communal councils" amounts to a big devolution of power to "the people". At the heart of the reform is an increase in the presidential term, from six to seven years, and the removal of term limits. First elected in 1998, under the current constitution Mr Chávez would not be able to stand at the next presidential election, due in 2012.

The reform also allows the president to dispose of the country's international reserves as he sees fit, and to declare any part of the country a "federal territory", ruled directly from the presidential palace. Another change will allow the president to declare an indefinite state of emergency and suspend the right to information and to elements of due process.

Scattered throughout the new draft are references to the "socialist state" Mr Chávez is planning. Elections, for example, are described as "for the construction of socialism", while the central bank's job will now be to contribute to the "socialist economy". What that means is not spelled out. But the new charter will weaken property rights, for example by allowing expropriations before rather than after a court ruling. The government will have specific powers to take over farms and food factories if "food security" is threatened.

The assembly is all but a rubber stamp for Mr Chávez, because of the opposition's short-sighted decision to boycott a legislative election in 2005. Of its 167 members, only a handful belonging to Podemos, a democratic socialist party, have objected. Podemos claims still to support the government. But it has accused the assembly of railroading the changes through, adding extra clauses at the last minute even after the reform had completed its first and second readings. The chavista loyalists in the assembly argue that these changes emerged from thousands of meetings held across the country in recent weeks.

The most vocal opposition has come from outside the assembly. This month the Catholic bishops issued an "exhortation" in which they warned that the "implantation of a socialist state...implies the end of pluralism and political freedom". In a joint statement, the country's professional associations warned that driving through a constitution that does not command widespread consensus threatens to "create the conditions for a political and social conflict of unpredictable dimensions".

Opinion polls suggest that many Venezuelans may not vote in the referendum. But Mr Chávez is likely to get his way. He has won every election since 1998, and the government now dominates the mass media. And the reform includes two crowd-pleasing measures: a cut in the working day to six hours and the granting of social security to informal workers, though neither requires constitutional change. If and when the price of Venezuela's oil plunges, socialism looks set to consign the country to constitutionally mandated poverty.