Although it still remains to close the book on the clinical case of the patient Hugo Chavez, we can already affirm that the issue of the Venezuelan president’s health has had its final outcome, it seems clear that the Bolivarian commander will not have another opportunity to be president.
After a silence where we have heard only vague comments about the complexity of the postoperative process and repetitions of what the whole world already knows, the time is coming to make public complete information, including a chronology. Information that is urgent to inform the world, and especially the Venezuelan people, about the causes that prevent the elected president from assuming office in a timely manner.
The main question is who should provide this information; who should take responsibility for what happened.
From June 30, 2011, when Chavez announced that he had detected a cancer, no medical institution has officially spoken about the patient. To reconstruct the history of the appearance, evolution and end stage of the disease, so far we have only a mix of rumors, reported by the Venezuelan government through their spokesmen, and the declarations issued in the first person by Chavez himself.
The accuracy of this information, already on the opposition’s agenda, goes far beyond the interests that oncologists might have based on their scientific curiosity about this type of cancer appearing and disappearing in such a surprising way. The real mystery to unveil before public opinion is perhaps found in these variables:
1. In October of 2012 Chavez was totally cured; thus he accepted his victory as a candidate in the presidential elections. Meanwhile, now he suffers from another, new cancer, that no one expected or suspected.
2. Chavez was not completely healthy, nor in any condition to accept the responsibility of assuming the presidency.
2.1 He knew it and hid it from his constituents.
2.2 He didn’t know it.
2.2.1 He didn’t know it because his medical team was not aware of the danger stalking him.
2.2.1 He didn’t know it because his medical team lied to him or hid the information.
Returning to the question of who should explain the above variables, obviously it would touch on the medical team located in Cuba or the Cuban government itself, which through its institutions chose the personnel in charge of this case.
If this is another cancer and not the one detected in mid-2011, they will have to provide scientific evidence comprehensible at least to specialists beyond political whims and Jewish curses.
If the disappearance of the disease was never definitive enough for Chavez to dare to accept his nomination as a presidential candidate, the medical team will then be obliged to confess that it did not have the scientific resources or the necessary expertise to know that, or, on the contrary, that it did know but refused to inform the patient, or that it knew, informed the patient, and he then decided to hide it.
Already, Señor Hugo Chavez has no political future, he barely has a biological future. If he already knew all this in October of last year, his decision to hide it from the electorate can only be understood to result from a voracious lust for power, or, being generous, as an act of elevated altruism: knowing his fatal destiny, he would assure in this way the presence of his party in the presidential chair, eventually handing off the baton to the vice president Nicolas Maduro. Perhaps it was a valiant effort to appear to vigorous — with the help of steroids — which precipitated the final breakdown of his health.
Now everything seems to indicate that such a sacrifice was in vain and in addition counterproductive, because the unveiling of such a deception could come at a devastating political cost to his party facing new elections, as provided for in these cases by the Venezuelan Constitution.
Venezuelan public opinion has a moral duty and right to demand a truthful and convincing explanation. We Cubans must also demand one because the international credibility of our institutions has been put into play here.
Reinaldo Escobar
Translated from Diario de Cuba
3 January 2013