Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez remained on his sickbed in Cuba yesterday while thousands of supporters rallied in his honour on the day he should have been sworn in for a new six-year term in the South American Opec nation.
The postponement of the inauguration, a first in Venezuelan history, has laid bare the gravity of Chavez’s condition after complications from a fourth cancer operation in his pelvic area.
It has also left his chosen heir, Vice President Nicolas Maduro – a former bus driver who shares his boss’s radical socialist views – in charge of day-to-day government until there is clarity over whether Chavez will recover.
The President, whose legendary energy and garrulous dominance of the airwaves had often made him seem omnipresent in Venezuela since taking power in 1999, has not been seen in public nor heard from since his surgery on December 11.
“Only God knows what will happen,” William Medina, a 49-year-old worker, said amid crowds of red-clad supporters milling around the presidential palace, many waving banners and posters bearing their hero’s face.
“But we are ready to take on what he taught us, because each one of us is a Chavez. We are ready to continue with socialism, because that is the only way to save planet earth.”
Venezuela’s 29 million people are anxiously watching what could be the last chapter in the extraordinary life of Chavez, who grew up in a rural shack and went on to become one of the world’s best-known and most controversial heads of state.
The saga also has huge implications for the likes of Cuba and other leftist allies in Latin America that have benefited for years from Chavez’s subsidised oil and other largesse.
A clutch of foreign friends, including the presidents of Uruguay, Bolivia, Haiti and Nicaragua, attended yesterday’s events in Caracas despite Chavez’s absence.
“We have to express our soli-darity at this enormously difficult time for a man who remembered my people, who did not turn his back,” said Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, referring to Chavez’s aid policies around Latin America.
“You hardly see that sort of solidarity anywhere in the world ... Chavez’s mark is a deep one, and let’s hope he can overcomeillness,” the former leftist guerrilla told Telesur, a TV network set up by Chavez to counter Western media influence.
The Miraflores palace, the focus of Thursday’s rally, has been the scene of some of the biggest dramas of Chavez’s rule, from protests in 2002 and a coup that toppled him briefly, to speeches after election wins and emotional returns from previous cancer treatments in Havana.