It is not the theme of my blog address the issues of other countries, but the fate of Venezuela is so interwoven with our own, that I make an exception. Years of learning “Granma Grammar”–the language of the Party’s daily newspaper–teach us that if there were a single publishable image of the Venezuelan president, it would already have been published, especially after the opportunity offered up by the Spanish newspaper El Pais.
Chavez is dying of the complications of his disease, one doesn’t have to be a doctor to know that metastases do not remit. Those who are governing in his name have shamelessly manipulated him to hold onto him like the apostles holding onto Jesus.
And I wonder how the Venezuelans will feel, including the president’s followers, when they realize the farce of his recovery has been playing on the feelings of the people; his own family with double the pain of the imminent loss and the manipulation.
I can’t feel that this farce at his expense is what he would have wanted. This seems to me true especially for the ultimate Chavez, much more sensitive because of his awareness of the gravity of his situation.
The President governed in the majority and won his elections. But the political validation of Venezuela’s current “hard men” is weak. When the time comes, what credibility will Nicolas Maduro, Elias Jaua, Diosdado Cabello have? This, in the face of the population, can be very serious.
Because it was them, not a doctor, not a relative, who issued encouraging news, while in Havana they watched the terminal phase of the illness. Will the Venezuelan people trust these functionaries who kept the real condition of the president secret?
The discredit is so undeniable that one wonders if we will see a conspirinoia to detail whether it would be a good move to get them out of the game in favor of other less visible (but perhaps more opportune) figures from the Chavez camp, and to do all this without appearing to have done so.
Reasons of State will be alleged, but the fissure is there. Something that has become clear to me in the two month absence of Chavez: however much they invoke him, none of his acolytes is Chavez.
February 13 2013