Senior Venezuelan officials on Friday pledged to push forward the socialist programs put in place by President Hugo Chavez.

"The government guarantees the completion of all President Chavez's plans," Energy and Mines Minister Rafael Ramirez, a close aide to Chavez, told reporters after discussing with executives of state-run banks to boost funds for housing projects.

"We haven't stopped even a minute because of Chavez's ailment and we are looking to expand the construction of socialism," Ramirez added, while announcing that 620,000 housing units will be built this year, four times the number built in the first two years of the national housing program.

A similar message was also conveyed by Vice President Nicolas Maduro at the inauguration ceremony of a school in the southwestern state of Barinas, Chavez's birthplace.

"We are working together closely -- the revolutionary governors, the central government, the ministers -- as a single permanent and continuous working team," said Maduro.

Chavez's prolonged absence and a series of unilateral moves by the authorities, including delaying his Jan. 10 swearing-in, have drawn outcry and suspicion from the opposition that Chavez was too sick to run the country.

The opposition originally planned to hold street protests Friday, but canceled them for fear of violence and decided to meet indoors instead at a gymnasium in Caracas.

Chavez supporters, meanwhile, has called for nationwide demonstrations next Wednesday to mark Democracy Day and show support of their ailing leader, who now remains hospitalized in Cuba after his fourth round of cancer surgery.