Weekly Report - 19 June 2008 (ISSN 1741-7422)

For the first time, President Hugo Chávez has backed down on a matter portrayed as critical to the country's security in the face of a barrage of criticism that it would have been tantamount to establishing a police state. He acknowledged on 7 June that there had been unacceptable mistakes in the intelligence and counterintelligence law he had enacted by decree only 11 days earlier [WR-08-22] and promised that they would be corrected. One tentative explanation for the volte-face was that criticism had not only come from the opposition, but also from the armed forces.