Hugo Chávez of Venezuela announced the next stage of his "Bolivarian revolution" last night, telling the national assembly that presidents should able to serve more than two terms and the country's central bank and international reserves should come under his control.

Mr Chávez began his second six-year term as President earlier this year with a series of vague and sweeping measures to increase state control over the Venezuelan economy.

Last night he put forward 33 separate constitutional reforms, including plans to extend presidential term limits by one year and to allow incumbents to stand in power as long as the ballot box allows them.

He told the assembly, whose 167 members all support the regime because of an election boycott by the opposition parties, that the reforms were necessary to “complete the death of the old, hegemonic oligarchy and the old, exploitative capitalist system, and complete the birth of the new state”.

Although the reforms are expected to be rubber-stamped by the compliant assembly, they must be approved by a national referendum, and Mr Chávez said that this proved he was not becoming an autocrat.

“They accuse me of planning to remain in power eternally or to concentrate power,” he said of his critics at home and abroad. “We know that is not the case."

Much of Venezuela's constitution was rewritten soon after Mr Chávez, a former patratrooper, came to power in 1999. But last night, he said that the realisation of "21st century socialism” would need extended presidential powers, not least further access to the country's financial reserves, and a new “patriotic and anti-imperialist” military.

"The international reserves of the republic will be handled by the central bank, under the direction of the president who is the administrator of the public finances,” he said.

It is estimated that Mr Chávez has already used his considerable power over the country's oil reserves — the fifth largest in the world — to lavish more than $25 billion in so-called "oil socialism" on allies that include Cuba, Iran and the left-leaning government of Evo Morales in Bolivia. He has also enjoyed the publicity of offering cheap heating oil to impoverished communities in New York and Ken Livingstone, the Mayor of London.

His bid to bring even more of the state under his personal control will further arouse anxieties in Washington, where Mr Chávez has all but supplanted Fidel Castro as America's chief annoyance in Latin America.

But approval of the reforms in a referendum — one of Mr Chávez's preferred techniques of securing popular legitimacy — may not be as straightforward as in the past. Mr Chávez suffered an unusual setback in the Venezuelan polls after his heavy-handed refusal to renew the licence of RCTV television, the country's longest-running independent television station earlier this year.

A poll by the firm Hinterlaces yesterday put Mr Chavez’s approval rating at 45 per cent, down 10 per cent since his pre-election high, with 54 per cent of voters opposing his constitutional reforms.

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