Chavez suffers setback, withdraws intelligence policy

On the same day that Colombia said it had captured a Venezuelan national guard officer carrying 40,000 AK-47 assault...

On the same day that Colombia said it had captured a Venezuelan national guard officer carrying 40,000 AK-47 assault rifle cartridges believed to be intended for leftist guerrillas, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela said on Saturday he would withdraw a decree overhauling intelligence policies that he had made earlier that week.

The rare reversal by Chávez came amid intensifying criticism in Venezuela from human rights groups.

President Chávez quietly unveiled his intelligence law in late May, which would have abolished the DISIP secret police and DIM military intelligence, replacing them with new intelligence and counterintelligence agencies.

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But in a rare act of self-criticism on Saturday, Chávez acknowledged the ire that his intelligence overhaul had provoked among legal scholars and human rights groups, which said Chávez was attempting to introduce a police state by forcing judges to cooperate with intelligence services and criminalising dissent.

“Where we made mistakes we must accept that and not defend the indefensible,” Chávez said at a campaign rally in Zulia State for gubernatorial and mayoral candidates from his Socialist party. “There is no dictatorship here,” he continued. “No one here is coerced into saying more than they want to say.”

Reeling from the defeat of a constitutional reform in December that would have expanded his powers, Chávez, in his 10th year in power, is facing multiple challenges as a reinvigorated opposition fields candidates in regional elections this year and Venezuela’s economic growth slows despite record oil prices.