By HIMSELF, no less!
Video in Spanish. Chavecito publicly declares he will rectify potentially dangerous errors in the proposed new Intelligence Law, which will completely overhaul the old secret police (DISIP) and military intelligence (DIM) services. As he noted, the old intel organs were often used by the government (and Washington) against the citizenry. He refuses to let that happen again.
This is consistent with his unwillingness to turn the army out to fire on protests and demonstrators (in stark contrast to what his kosher-with-Washington predecessors did on numerous occasions.) Which dates back as far as 1989, in the wake of the Caracazo–the use of the Venezuelan army to violently suppress protests against a president gone power-mad. Chavecito, fortunately, was sick at the time, and therefore not sent to fire on his fellow Venezuelans. He swore never to do that himself, and he kept that vow–even during the coup of ’02, when the army could have been sent to kill every coup-plotter at Miraflores, but wasn’t–and didn’t. (They merely arrested a few key figures and let the rest go, as the Chavistas outside the palace cheered and shouted–and lynched nobody.)
Holy crap, a president who actually listens, is accountable, and corrects his own mistakes. How many more times does he plan to make the lamestream media look like jackasses when they hype a bogus story? This is getting to be a habit with him, and it must be stopped, lest Venezuela begin to look like a radical democracy!
I think it infuriates the US press even more when he’s conciliatory and shows them what democracy is all about.