Cracks strain Chavez majority-- Opposition: 'Mr. President, your majority is dying'

Wednesday, June 11, 2003 Posted: 1840 GMT ( 2:40 AM HKT)

CARACAS, Venezuela (CNN-Reuters) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez faced a struggle on Wednesday to pass media and anti-terrorism laws in the National Assembly after an inconclusive vote revealed cracks in the leftist leader's slim majority.

In a rowdy debate in the 165-member assembly late Tuesday, lawmakers loyal to the president failed to obtain the 83 votes needed to ratify the measures approved at a controversial outdoor parliament session held in a Caracas park Friday.

Jubilant opposition deputies hailed the government's failure to impose its majority. It was the first parliamentary defeat suffered by Chavez in his more than four years of rule in the world's No. 5 oil exporter.

"Mr. President, your majority is dying," opposition deputy Alejandro Arzola said.

Opposition deputies, who mustered 79 votes, had boycotted Friday's bizarre, one-sided parliament session in El Calvario park when procedural reforms to speed up the passage of government-sponsored draft laws were approved.

These included an anti-terrorism bill and a law to regulate radio and television that the opposition fears will be used to muzzle critics and restrict public protests.

One-time event, pro-Chavez side claims

Analysts cautioned that while the polarized parliament spelled trouble for Chavez's efforts to push through controversial laws, it did not mean he had lost his majority.

"This shows the opposition can block what they see as some excesses ... but they don't control the assembly either," Luis Vicente Leon, of local pollsters Datanalisis, told Reuters.

The government side said Tuesday's vote, in which three pro-Chavez deputies abstained, was a one-time event. They insisted they would impose their majority when another vote on the procedural reforms was taken Thursday.

Since Chavez won a landslide election in late 1998, he used a solid majority in the National Assembly to push through left-wing reforms aimed at consolidating his self-styled "revolution" in the oil-rich nation.

But desertions of parliamentary supporters have whittled away this majority amid growing opposition to policies that include nationalist reforms increasing the state role in the economy and handouts of land and credits to the poor.

Foes of Chavez, who survived a coup last year, accuse him of trying to install Cuba-style communism.