VENEZUELA’S communists have condemned new electoral rules requiring political parties to publish their membership lists.

The new rules from the National Electoral Council (CNE) are aimed at smaller parties, which fail to garner more than 1 per cent in each of the country’s 12 states.

The Morning Star’s sources say the intention of the law passed last year was to expose opposition parties whose funds are disproportionate to their small membership.

They face being deregistered if they do not submit a list of members for publication on the CNE website.

But the Communist Party of Venezuela (PCV) — which was outlawed under military dictatorships from 1931 to 1941 and 1948 to 1958 and during its insurgency in the 1960s — has refused to do so.

The Homeland For All party, a member of the governing Great Patriotic Pole coalition, also objected to the new requirement.

“We know what has happened with lists in Venezuela,” PCV general secretary Oscar Figuera said on Saturday.

“We have said that we are not going to comply,” he said. “We are not going to submit to the rules that the CNE has decided to apply based on a decision of the Supreme Justice Tribunal” — Venezuela’s highest court.

In a separate radio interview, PCV politburo member Carlos Aquino confirmed that the party would not participate in the process under “aberrant rules.”

He said: “The greatest implications are not that the PCV, for the fourth time in its history, does not have the legal status to stand candidates but of the national and international connotations that it signifies.”