Chavez foes attack push to end term limits

By Brian Ellsworth

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's leading opposition politician on Thursday attacked President Hugo Chavez's bid to scrap presidential term limits as an attempted coup and a sign of "puerile egomania."

Chavez proposed a raft of legal changes on Wednesday that increase the presidential term from six to seven years, end limits on re-election and strengthen the state's expropriation powers as he consolidates his hold over the OPEC nation. The changes would have to be approved by a popular referendum.

Critics of the Venezuelan leader say he has steadily edged his oil-producing nation to a dictatorship but, through use of petroleum dollars, Chavez has secured strong support among the poor majority with free health and education projects.

"This is an attempted coup because it weakens the republic," said former presidential candidate Manuel Rosales, who lost to Chavez when the president won a landslide re-election last year.

"And he's doing this amid his narcissistic illness, his personal ambition ... his puerile egomania."

Justice First opposition party leader Julio Borges dismissed Chavez's reforms as a thinly veiled attempt to advance his "continuous re-election, re-election for life, permanent re-election."

Under the current constitution, Chavez is in his second and final term and could not be elected again after it ends in 2012. The reform proposal would allow him to stay as long as he keeps winning elections.

Opposition leaders and U.S. officials frequently accuse Chavez, an anti-U.S. leader with close ties to Cuba's Fidel Castro, of concentrating power and controlling institutions, such as the central bank and oil company PDVSA.