Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez unable to attend swearing in.

AutorGaudin, Andres

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announced on Dec. 8 that his health had taken a turn for the worse and that he would have to undergo a fourth operation in Havana, Cuba. He asked Venezuelans, if it became necessary to call new elections, to vote for Foreign Minister and Vice President Nicolas Maduro. Since that time, various sources have begun to predict an uncertain and unstable future for the Caribbean nation.

Chavez's announcement came only eight days before regional elections, an event that both the government and the opposition, looking ahead, had agreed was exceptionally important (NotiSur, Dec. 7, 2012). On Dec. 16, Venezuelans would choose governors for the country's 23 states, seven of which were in the hands of members of the opposition coalition Mesa de Unidad Democratico (MUD). It was also only 25 days before Chavez was to be sworn in as president for the 2013-2019 term. It would be his fourth term, which, if completed, would give him two decades in office (NotiSur, Oct. 19, 2012).

Chavez asks supporters to back vice president if necessary

Despite the elections' importance for the development and consolidation of the Revolucion Bolivariana, in his brief appearance on Dec. 8, Chavez did not ask Venezuelans to vote for the Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV) candidates. He concentrated on putting Maduro at center stage. At the time, few realized that Chavez was saying that he would likely be unable to be sworn in on Jan. 10 and that, since the 1999 Constitution requires calling new elections 30 days after the initiation of a president's "absolute absence," he was suggesting Maduro as his successor. As it turned out, Chavez was unable to take the oath on Jan. 10 for the mandate for which he had been elected.

On Dec. 16, the governing party swept the regional elections--the PSUV candidates' combined vote in the 23 states was 2 percentage points more than its margin of victory against the MUD in the Oct. 7 presidential balloting. The opposition kept only three of the seven gubernatorial seats that it held before the elections, and two opposition winners were former Chavistas now opposed to the president.

The opposition's defeat in the Oct. 7 presidential elections (55% for Chavez, 44% for Henrique Capriles) left it badly damaged, with the need to redeem itself electorally in the gubernatorial elections. Therefore, the Dec. 16 loss was devastating. Before and after, the MUD saw core members defect, and those who remained had...

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