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FOR MANY VENEZUELANS, the late Hugo Chavez is deeply etched in their minds and souls. But plans for them to be able to view him in perpetuity may have gone awry.
The process of embalming his remains specially so that he could be viewed like Lenin started too late, acting President Nicolas Maduro said on Tuesday.
Scientists from around the world and countries like Russia and Germany have been summoned and the news is not good, Maduro said.
The government had said it wanted Chavez’s supporters to be able to visit the late standard-bearer of the Latin American left forever in the wake of his death on 5 March from cancer after 14 years in power.
The reason is that “preparatory steps would have to have been taken much earlier,” Maduro said. “The decision would have to have been made much earlier.
“So I have the duty to report on these steps so that everyone knows that there are difficulties that could make it impossible to do what was done with Lenin, Ho Chi Minh or Mao Zedong,” Maduro added.
Maduro said that he got the idea from his love of Chavez – and from presidents who came from other countries and suggested the late leader be preserved for permanent viewing.
Chavez’s casket has been on view for several days in Caracas, with tens of thousands of supporters filing past to bid farewell.
It was only on Monday that Venezuela plunged into a bitter election fight to succeed Chavez, with Maduro and opposition leader Henrique Capriles facing off in a flurry of name-calling.
Thousands of the late president’s supporters massed outside the National Election Council as Maduro, dressed in a jacket in the colors of the Venezuelan flag, officially registered his candidacy.
“I am not Chavez, but I am his son and all of us together, the people, are Chavez,” he said.
Wearing red berets and T-shirts emblazoned with Chavez’s image, his supporters vowed loyalty to the deeply polarizing socialist revolution that the former army paratrooper championed for over a decade.
Capriles, an energetic 40-year-old state governor who lost to Chavez in October presidential elections, kept his followers off the street but warned Maduro on Sunday: “I won’t leave you an open path.”
“You are going to have to defeat me with votes,” Capriles said in accepting the nomination of the main opposition coalition.
Venezuelans will vote in snap elections on 14 April after a brief campaign that analysts say heavily favors Maduro, who Chavez picked as his successor in his last public appearance before going to Cuba for cancer surgery in December.
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As a contrast, our newly appointed Taoiseach has frequently disputed the correlation between poverty and ill health and premature mortality. Despite the fact that Veradker is a qualified medical practitioner, his political ideology that poverty is not a concern of government, blinds him to the hugely detrimental impact of poverty on human health.
Diets in poorer area plays a bugger role in life expectancy….
@Paul: When we see that obesity if a factor in First World “poverty” we should wake up and see that PC fake analyse is keeping the poor, poor. Certain political parties need to keep a pool of poor people as voters to get themselves elected and these are the real enemies of the poor.
The private practice model of GP healthcare is not financially viable in poorer areas. Timely Access to GPs is more restricted in the case of poorer people than for those who are more comfortably off.
@Jenny mcCarty: You can qualify that statement, I assuming.
@Tony Daly: quiet the opposite. Workers have to arrange time off work to visit GP and pay 50 to 65€ as they don’t have medical cards.
@Geraoid O’Helidhe: Great, all workers should have them and the public housing close to jobs if required.
Well done for highlighting health inequalities. Not new but larger ignored in ireland.
See the Black Report – very old doc now
http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2190/XXMM-JMQU-2A7Y-HX1E?journalCode=joha
Also this affects everyone to some degree as there is a social gradient.
It’s all about choices….
@Gavin Huban: To an extent it is but you have less choices to make or certain choices have a higher cost as a proportion of your income. To eat healthier might be very difficult to afford or even get depending on where you live.
Slightly off topic but one glaring indictment of our health service is that even for private patients, waiting times are only “a matter of month”.
In this country we have now a new norm of having to wait months even privately except where you are a Minister or politician.
@Ger Healy: I completely agree. There is something to be said for a competitive American model of medicine where doctors decide to help people, make money because of their qualifications and expertise, and not be grossly overworked. When I have had to see a specialist, after waiting a very long time for the appointment, I wonder about the waiting list of people behind me and how that must affect the health of the doctor being put under so much pressure day in and day out.
@Ger Healy: The narrative that people are definitely corrupt if they are politicians is wrong and threatens democracy and is similar to the widely held belief that all media are liars.
Put it this way…………………….have you ever seen a bookie riding a bicycle?Go figure!
@Jenny mcCarty: Have you ever asked yourself why you need these gross simplifications, Jenny? I pay a mortgage and work, but I acknowledge this as good fortune, as well as the work ethic and attitude I was lucky enough to inherit – in the long run I’m far better off in all respects. Stop whining – you may need to see the world in such simple terms because you are frightened by its complex problems and just want it to go away. For you and all of us it will, eventually, and this will have been your life – is this the best you can do?
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