CARACAS - President Hugo Chavez on Sunday named Venezuela's representative to the Inter-American Development Bank (IADB) to the largely administrative post of vice president.

Alida Bastidas, who represents Venezuela and Panama in the multilateral Washington-based bank, said she was "committed to the process of participative democracy" promoted by Chavez.

"A first class revolutionary," Chavez said, presenting her to the country in his weekly radio show from the western Tachira State.

An economics graduate from Venezuela's Central University, Bastidas met Chavez as a university professor in 1993 when Chavez was serving a two-year jail sentence for a failed coup attempt in 1992.

Chavez, a former paratrooper who swept to a landslide election victory in 1998, wants to bring a "democratic revolution" to the world's No. 3 oil exporter, erasing corruption and bringing "social justice" to the poor majority.

His opponents accuse him of amassing dictatorial powers, having overturned an opposition-controlled Congress, purged the Judiciary and rewritten the constitution.

The vice president replaces the president in cabinet meetings if the president is abroad and assumes the presidency if the president is removed from office by death or incapacity.

Chavez said Bastidas was in 1993 head of a group including Planning Minister Jorge Giordani and Education Minister Hector Navarro formulating an alternative economic program that formed the basis for Chavez's policy proposal in 1995.

She was also one of the people, along with Energy and Mines Minister Ali Rodriguez, who presented a legal challenge in the Supreme Court against a 1996 oil exploration licensing, which brought multinational oil companies back to the industry that had been nationalized in 1976.

During her term in the IADB, Chavez said Bastidas was responsible for obtaining several loans for Venezuela, aimed at children and agricultural projects.

(Reuter)