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VENEZUELA HAS CALLED off public New Year’s Eve festivities as social media sizzled with worry after the government said cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez has taken a turn for the worse.
The streets of Caracas were quiet as front page headlines relayed that Chavez had developed “new complications” from a respiratory infection after undergoing his fourth cancer-related surgery on 11 December in Havana.
His vice president and political heir, Nicolas Maduro, broke the news from Havana on Sunday night, saying the condition of the Venezuelan leader was delicate and that he faced an uphill battle.
Chavez, the face of the Latin American left for more than a decade and a firebrand critic of what he calls US imperialism, has been in power since 1999 in Venezuela, an OPEC member that sits on top of the world’s largest proven oil reserves.
For many Venezuelans, a holiday season without their ubiquitous comandante just wasn’t the same.
“I do not know what will happen to Chavez, but we have never had a Christmas like this. Only God knows what will happen with him and with us,” said 70-year-old retiree Miguel Enrique as he prepared to attend Mass.
Twitter reaction
Authorities canceled a New Year’s Eve concert in a downtown plaza and Information Minister Ernesto Villegas urged “families in Caracas and Venezuela in general to ring in the New Year at home, praying and expressing hope for the health” of Chavez.
On Twitter, which is extremely popular in Venezuela, hashtags translating into expressions such as “Chavez will live and conquer” and “I love Chavez” were all the rage.
A person who signed as NeriColmenares described the loquacious former paratrooper in practically messianic terms.
“Chavez will live and will conquer because he is a man who turned into a nation, into spirit, into struggle. He has the power to confront all the torments of life,” this person wrote.
But Chavez is also deeply polarising, even though he has ruled for nearly 14 years, and his detractors spoke out too.
“I do not want Chavez to die. We would look really bad as a country if a disease had to do our job of removing him from power,” one Enrique Vasquez wrote.
Concerns over upcoming inauguration
Chavez, 58, won another six-year term in October’s presidential election, and is scheduled to be sworn in on January 10.
But his ill health has raised concerns that he won’t be well enough to attend his inauguration.
Under Venezuela’s constitution, a presidential election must be held within 30 days if the president is incapacitated or dies before his inauguration or within the first four years of his term.
But Chavez’s government has said that the inauguration can be postponed if the president is not fit enough to be sworn in.
Not so, said Veppex, a Miami-based association of 25,000 Venezuelans living outside their country as refugees or political exiles.
It insisted the constitution must be respected verbatim and that new elections must be held within 30 days if Chavez cannot be sworn in on the scheduled day. It said all signs were that he will not be.
Venezuela’s most prominent opposition leader, Henrique Capriles, was re-elected earlier this month as governor of the key state of Miranda after providing Chavez with the sternest political test of his 13-year rule.
In the October 7 election, Chavez won 54 percent of the vote compared to 45 percent for Capriles, but some opinion polls had put the candidates in a virtual tie, raising opposition hopes of a long-awaited victory.
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Jesus I hope Enda’s ok, I’d hate to have to cancel tonight…
I hope Mr. Chavez recovers.
Enda was NEVER ok.
Hope he’ll pull through. He is an inspiration.
Go live there then seeing as you love him!
What unusual logic. I also admire Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Does that mean I should go live in Colombia?
An inspiration to who, exactly?
He is indeed. Hope the poor man pulls through. Long live the revolution!
Have you lived there?
Can we send all our lefties there? They’d soon start leaning right
You don’t lean right.
You goosestep right.
Smashing news 2013 could get off to a fantastic start if he pops his clogs.
Wishing death on another person is repellent.
Ha what I said is mild compared to some of the stuff posted under articles about George Bush Sr & Margaret Thatchers declining health. Selective outrage as usual.
But Cian you are forgetting that he is an anti western, anti American left winger. Sure isn’t he only a saint to the true believers. To us he is just another commie authoritarian.
What a disgusting comment it says more about you than chavez
Why don’t we euthanize kids like Cian so that 2013 eliminates the nasty rightwingers.
Petr, may I remind you of your comment towards George bush senior the other day?! You are such a hypocrit!
Declan — I dislike Bush. I like Chavez. Where is the hypocrisy?
Petr, you said above that “wishing death on someone is repellant”
I’m sure that with your comments on Bush senior the other day you were wishing the same on him.
Btw this revolution that you want, what this it entail? what is the end result? What are you revolting against? will you be doing it by force of arms resulting in death or through the ballot box? If I don’t take part would you send me off to a reeducation camp?
But Declan, I didn’t wish death upon Bush Snr., so there’s no hypocrisy.
With all their oil they have to go to Cuba for Hospital treatment !
Cuba has one of the best medical service in the world. A supposed first world country such as Ireland could learn a lot from it! But then again, as long as this place is full of corrupt, greedy people, it doesn’t matter about the lower order.
I think the main reason he got treatment in Cuba was that Cuba can guarantee there’ll be no leaks about his condition; whereas that’s not the case in Venezuela.
@Rodrigo – And Cuba isn’t corrupt?
Cuba has a two tier system – one for party apparatchiks and foreign USD contributors and another for Cuban Joe Soaps. Whoever believes a country on $2000 GDP per capita can support a first word healthcare system for everyone is a fool.
If Cuba was not blockaded for the last half century at the instigation of the deported mafiosi, who were busy turning it another Haiti like the Duvaliers, conditions might be a little better.
If spineless Kenny went sick we would celebrate for 2 days.
And if the whole cabinet got sick with him, I’d celebrate forever.
Don’t worry – 2016 is coming.
They are sick. And sickening.
Ah no Mark not another End of World prophecy…
Cian, get out tonight and get yourself laid. I think you could use a good ride
God bless Hugo Chavez! Can’t believe Thatcher may outlive this hero of the oppressed. I hope Venezuela can resist pressure from the political right and more importantly any interference from US imperialist interest.
I am curious. What model of socialist paradise would you and the rest of your left wing friends have us follow? Would it be the old Soviet model or maybe the Maoist Chinese one or could it be the North Korean Kim dynasty or if you really want to go for it the Khmer Rouge version?
Which capitalist paradise do you most admire, Mick?
Leopold’s Congo, Ireland in the 1840s, Haiti today, Chile under Pinochet, Hitler’s corporate Nazism, Nigeria under its Shell democracy…or America with its megawealthy amidst squalor, violence and the greatest per capita prison population on the planet and a military with the capacity to sterilise the planet by remote control while they look for water on Mars?
Or maybe you like the soup kitchens by the golfing hotels of modern Ireland with its collapsing health services amid swimming pools for remediation of fetlock-sprained thoroughbred racehorses on a taxpayer supported industry while childrens’ hospitals shake buckets in the streets to keep wards open.
Do tell.
Well Damien I quite prefer any Democratic capitalist system. There at least the people get to choose and change the government. Can you say the same for the Communist ones. But as you answered may you would like to tell us which of the Socialist Edens you would like to see imposed on us?
I’ll quite happily join join you in that democratic capitalist country when I identify one where there is real democratic input into the management of capital for the benefit of the demos(people), rather than the current degenerating set up where private corporate capital controls resources and populations for no other purpose than further capital accumulation as a numerologically addicted end in itself, for the sake of the ‘game’.
Its neither democratic, adult or even sane; unless you consider the neoliberal resource warmongering of the past decade to be such, or the wholesale export of food during our 19th century famines to be so, or the barbarity of Viet Nam.
@ Gingerman.. Who in their right mind would ride him!!!!
Or any Chelsea fan for that matter :)
So what you are saying that your vote here in Ireland is completely wasted. And so is the vote of every Irish citizen because as you believe that the big multi-nationals choose the Government!
have your say