By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS -- Time was when President Hugo Chávez enthused about decentralizing power in Venezuela. He even had the principle of sharing power down the line written into the new Bolivarian Constitution adopted at his behest in 1999.

Decentralization was to be a central tenet of his bid to recast the country in a new mould after what he saw as the misgovernment under the old Fourth Republic, in which the two old warhorses of Venezuelan politics, Acción Democrática (AD) and the Social Christians at Copei, alternated in power.

The new Fifth Republic was to be entirely different. Power was to be redistributed to give the people at the bottom a bigger say in how the country was run. No more bossyboots in Caracas telling the poor and under-privileged what to do and what to think, and when and how to do it.

But, as they say, that was then and this is now. Talk in the corridors at the National Assembly is of a introducing a barrage of legislation giving the federal government more sway over what people further down the chain of command can and cannot do.

The thrust of this, it's said, is that state governments and municipal authorities would be subject to more direct control from the Executive.

The plan is part and parcel of Chávez' plan to change the political structure of the country by dividing Venezuela into five or six large territories controlled by regional overlords directly appointed by him.

This would be a huge shift from the present power breakdown made up of 23 separate states and the capital, all of them governed by elected authorities with a degree of autonomy from the national government. And, critics say, it would turn the very notion of decentralization on its head.

Chávez has been talking of his proposed redesign for some time now, but apart from political junkies and conspiracy theorists, few people appear to be taking much notice. That may be about to change as it becomes clearer by the day that what he's really talking about is money.

Bright eyes have spotted what they see as the first step down this road tucked away in, of all places, the Budget Bill for 2009 as it trundles through parliament. The text includes a reference to obliging state institutions to "build solid structures for the establishment of the new territorial vision."

Mindful of constitutional niceties, officials intend to use existing laws and state organizations to push through this far-reaching change. For a start, they've got their eye on the Special Economic Assignations Law (LAEE), which usually gets shunted through Parliament in tandem with the budget.

They're also said to fixed their gaze on, of all things in this particular context, the Inter-Governmental Fund for Decentralization (Fides) as the vehicle for wrenching Venezuela from the pattern of the past and resetting it under Chávez' New Order.

The ultimate aim of all this, according to both friend and foe, is to achieve Chávez' over-riding aim of transforming Venezuela into a new society based on what he calls a "socialist productive model."

The innate contradiction inherent in the plan is there for all to see in another piece of legislation that's also plodding its way through a parliament where Chávez' United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) holds all but absolute sway.

This is a Bill setting out a new Law of Arrangement and Management of Territory, which has already been approved in a first debate and under which Chávez as the "supreme authority" would have the ultimate say in overseeing the new political structure of Venezuela.

The text states that "state and municipal public administrations and their decentralized entities will be submitted to the directives of the regional authorities, and obliged to collaborate actively in the execution of plans and projects considered to be of regional importance."

And today, the Secretary General of the opposition party Democratic Action (AD), Henry Ramos, warned of just such a thing -- that the government of Hugo Chávez was seeking to usurp control from the just elected governors and mayors through his "appointment of vice presidents" over them.

In this future most probably not far away nobody will be able to say they weren't warned, even if they were asleep at the wheel.