Spooks law spiked ... the President is very evidently not amused

Caracas Daily Journal (Jeremy Morgan): President Hugo Chavez vetoed the law on the intelligence and counter-intelligence services, describing parts of it as “disastrous” and calling on the National Assembly (AN) to draw up alternative legislation on reorganizing the secret services. Chavez' decision, announced in a television broadcast on Tuesday afternoon, came as the law drew further opprobrium even after he'd ordered it to be hauled back for revision.

The clamor of complaints and protests continued to buzz in the background ... the President took particular exception to Article 16.

Critics condemned this and other aspects of the legislation as a writ for snoopers and snitches. Legal observers argued that the law obliged citizens to inform on each another, on penalty of being jailed if they didn't.

“While I'm here, this article cannot be carried out,” he said. “For this, the decision I took to overturn the law and leave it to the National Assembly to draw up a law that articulates the distinct corps of intelligence.”

The hue and cry was entirely predictable and not long in coming. Students took up the challenge implied in the law, making it a theme of an opposition march last Saturday as the law threatened to become a long-running issue.

Chavez' political antennae evidently picked up the public sentiment -- and the ammunition that it might provide for his critics. In private, one of his supporters recently told this reporter that the law had done more to depict the President as “an authoritarian and a bully” than any other action by his government or allegations against him. It was suggested that the law was hurriedly prepared and rushed past the President. This was a way to defend him for having signed it into law last week. But that still left the question of whether he'd read what he signed.

Questions inevitably hovered over the prime architect of the law, Interior & Justice Minister Ramon Rodriguez Chacin ... he is on his second term as minister, and had argued that the law couldn't be undone because it had been passed by the legislature.

Ahead of Chavez' statement, Carlos Vecchio, an independent contender to run for mayor of Chacao in central Caracas, went to the National Assembly (AN) with a proposal that the new law be overthrown. Lawyer Hermann Escarra similarly petitioned the Supreme Justice Tribunal (TSJ).