But Mr. Chavez's majority in the National Assembly is still large enough to assure passage of an "enabling law" that would allow him to decree at least some of the sweeping measures unpopular with the opposition.
Rio de Janeiro last year introduced a compulsory quota in its fashion shows, decreeing that at least 10% of models should be black.
To give some idea: several years ago the editor of a prestigious journal, Physical Review Letters, found it necessary to decree that at least the first couple of paragraphs of each published paper should be intelligible to an average Ph.D physicist not specializing in the subject of the paper.
Later that year, however, a deputy prime minister decreed that at least 7 tons of gallium should be handed over to the fuel ministry.
It can be lifted if a judge finds that the Police Department has been in substantial compliance with the consent decree for at least two years.
"We think he is just playing along, just doing nothing," he said "We were hoping he would use the emergency decree to at least ask the people gently to please leave.
Earlier this year Chinese officials were hinting, in conciliatory fashion, that at least decrees governing arbitrary detention could be abolished, opening the way for China to ratify the UN's Convenant on Civil and Political Rights as the EU has pressed it to do.
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 11 — Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, appeared to yield to intense American pressure on Sunday by restoring parliamentary elections in early January, but he said his emergency decree would last at least through then, immediately raising new questions about the vote's legitimacy.
Since even the mankiest animal was decreed to be worth at least the standard value, the prices put on most beasts rose far higher.
So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at least two Internet services.
