The vice president of the Venezuelan Bishops’ Conference, Archbishop Roberto Luckert, has denounced the government’s plan to emulate “the educational program that is being implemented in Cuba and which clearly is an affront to everything that the Constitution says about what education should be in a democratic state.”

According to Union Radio, Archbishop Lucker said Venezuela’s educational policy “should be free, it should be plural,” and he denounced officials for seeking to impose the Cuban educational model in Venezuela.

The archbishop concluded that he was not surprised to learn that the expedited approval of the government’s educational reform, despite not obtaining the approval of the National Assembly, was included in President Hugo Chavez’s sweeping new powers allowing him to legislate by decree.