The Venezuelan leader seems keen to maintain his grip on power, writes TOM HENNIGANin São Paulo
JUST DAYS after announcing he has cancer, Hugo Chávez was back in Venezuela to take part in celebrations to mark the bicentenary of the country’s declaration of independence from Spain.
Though he did not attend the showpiece “civic-military” parade in Caracas on Monday, the Venezuelan president addressed the nation from the Miraflores presidential palace. He called the anniversary “the beginning of the return – not the return of Chávez, it is the return of the people”, and said that in the past decade Venezuela had recovered the independence it had lost under previous regimes.
Last week Chávez broke three weeks of silence to say an operation in Cuba had revealed a cancerous tumour, which was subsequently removed. He made a surprise return to Venezuela on Monday and told cheering supporters during an appearance from a balcony of the presidential palace that he had only won the “first stage” of his battle against the still unspecified cancer.
In both appearances, Chávez appeared in ruder health than during last week’s televised statement from Cuba announcing his illness, when he looked pallid and seemed to have lost weight.
Chávez’s reverence for his country’s founding fathers means he would have been loath to miss the events, but his return will also dispel some of the political uncertainty that had enveloped Caracas since last week’s announcement.
Venezuelan vice-president Elías Jaua said Chávez would reshuffle his team “ahead of the new stage that is coming” and could hold a cabinet meeting later this week.
The announcement seems determined to put an end to opposition calls that Chávez hand over power while he receives treatment abroad.
Jaua dismissed claims from some sectors of the opposition that Chávez’s illness was a “show” to garner sympathy for a leader who has been under pressure in recent months from growing economic problems, rising crime and an increasingly unified opposition. “Let them live with their misery,” said Jaua.
Multiplying problems at home have resulted in a wane in Chávez’s influence in South America. Despite his aspirations to regional leadership, from the continent only the presidents of Bolivia, Paraguay and Uruguay attended the bicentenary celebrations. The continent’s bigger powers sent their foreign ministers.
Chávez’s self-styled socialist Bolivarian Revolution is today a less attractive model in a region Washington once feared was falling under the sway of Caracas.
Reports of economic mismanagement leaving Venezuelans suffering from shortages and power cuts are now common across the continent.
Nothing better emphasises this change in the regional mood towards the Bolivarian Revolution than the career of Peru’s president-elect, Ollanta Humala.
In 2006 he was an avowed admirer of Chávez when he came close to winning the presidency.
But following his defeat, Humala ditched the Chávista rhetoric and presented himself as a candidate seeking to emulate the success of more moderate left-wing leaders such as Brazil’s Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Last month Humala won a narrow but clear victory in Peru’s presidential election.
Chávez, however, has been written off before only to return to confound his critics and enemies.
The country has by its own count larger energy reserves than Saudi Arabia, which explains why, despite the chaos in much of the economy, the state can still raise funds abroad.
By recently doubling the country’s debt ceiling ahead of next year’s presidential elections, the government has signalled it is planning a round of lavish public spending of the sort that helped Chávez defeat a recall referendum in 2005.
In his address, Chávez said: “Now we go on until June 24th, 2021! Until the bicentenary of Carabobo!”
He was referring to bicentenary celebrations of the battle 190 years ago that finally secured Venezuelan independence from Spain. But, cancer notwithstanding, opponents might be left wondering if he also meant his own grip on power.