The Venezuelan national assembly has passed a law that bars foreign funding for non-government organisations (NGOs) and political parties, adding to a series of measures that government opponents say are aimed at cracking down on dissent.
The law, which was approved late yesterday, puts in jeopardy human rights groups and other organisations that have foreign funding. Organisations that receive money from abroad may be fined up to double the amount of funding received.
It is one of many controversial measures that Hugo Chávez's government is pushing through in the final weeks of an outgoing congress that had only a token opposition presence. A new legislature with a much larger bloc of opposition deputies takes office on 5 January.
Opposition politician Juan Jose Molina said that the law "criminalises and persecutes the democratic opposition" and harms the work of non-governmental groups that serve a vital function in Venezuelan society.
It also penalises organisations or political parties that invite foreigners to the country who publicly give "opinions that offend institutions of the state, its high officials" or that are contrary to Venezuela's sovereignty. Groups can be fined for such statements, and political parties can be barred from elections for five to eight years.
Venezuelan human-rights groups have said the law will put some organisations at risk of disappearing by making them fully dependent on limited domestic donations.
Chávez has said that the measures are needed to prevent foreign intervention in Venezuela, particularly by the US government and US-based organisations.
"How are we going to permit political parties, NGOs ... to continue to be financed with millions and millions of dollars from the Yankee empire?" Chávez said last month.
The US Agency for International Development has provided millions of dollars to Venezuelan organisations for programmes that it says aims to promote democracy. Other organisations that have funded programmes in Venezuela include the National Endowment for Democracy, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute.
Last night the national assembly also passed a law that would allow for the suspension of any politicians who defect from a party during their term. That aims to counter defections in the current legislature, where about a dozen politicians have broken with Chávez.
"They're putting a straitjacket on the parliamentarians who are to come," said opposition legislator Ismael Garcia, who was among those who broke with Chávez.
Other laws approved in the dying days of the congressional session impose regulations on the internet, bar some kinds of online messages, make it easier for authorities to revoke the licences of TV or radio stations and give the president powers to enact laws by decree for 18 months.
A new banking law passed on Friday says that banks will be considered to be of "public utility", increasing the powers of Chávez's government to intervene in the sector.
The national assembly is also discussing a measure to centralise government control over the country's autonomous universities. Students have held protests to denounce the measures, which they say are aimed at taking over universities that have been a bastion of opposition to Chávez.
Chávez has enjoyed near total control of the national assembly since the opposition boycotted 2005 elections.
That is set to change when the new congress takes office, with 67 of the 165 seats controlled by the opposition – enough to prevent Chávez from having the two-thirds majority needed to approve some types of major legislation and to confirm supreme court justices.
Anticipating that shift, pro-Chávez politicians earlier this month appointed nine new supreme court justices, reinforcing the dominance of judges widely seen as friendly to his government..