CARACAS, Venezuela – President Hugo Chavez has never been one to share decision-making authority. Now, the voluble socialist strongman and acerbic critic of the U.S. may have no choice but to designate a successor.
His announcement that he will go to Cuba within a week to remove a growth that he says is likely malignant could not come at a worse moment for the leader who is working to transform Venezuela with what he calls “21st-century socialism.”
With a tight re-election campaign brewing for the president, analysts said Wednesday that Venezuela could be thrown into turmoil because Chavez has resisted grooming a successor during his 13 years in power.
The result is a power vacuum that his camp will be hard-pressed to fill, especially if he is unable to campaign for the Oct. 7 elections or wins and then becomes physically incapable of governing.
“Venezuela is living with the unsettling effects of prolonged, one-man rule,” said Michael Shifter, president of Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank based in Washington, D.C. “Anything can happen.”
Shifter said “a fierce power struggle and jockeying for position” is nearly inevitable for Chavez’s ruling Socialist Party of Venezuela.
“I promise I will fight without respite for my life,” the 57-year-old Chavez tweeted Wednesday.
A day earlier, he conceded in sharing his bad news that he could be out of action for weeks.
Under the circumstances, it would take a Herculean effort to be able to simultaneously run a government, fight to stay in office and battle cancer.
“I’m not going to be able to continue with the same rhythm,” he told state TV by telephone late Tuesday. He said he would need to “rethink my personal agenda and take care of myself, confront what must be confronted.”
Chavez did not mention who might replace him during an absence that cancer specialists say could last weeks if the leader has to undergo radiation treatment, as he himself said he expected. Chavez said the same doctors who removed a baseball-size cancerous tumor from his pelvic region in June would be operating on him.
He denied rumors that the cancer had spread aggressively, but also said his doctors don’t know whether the new inch-long lesion they found over the weekend is malignant.
The former paratrooper met Wednesday with his inner circle, with a central topic bound to have been how to combat the opposition’s presidential candidate – Henrique Capriles, an athletic 39-year-old state governor.
The president of the Chavez-controlled National Assembly, Diosdado Cabello, told reporters that Chavez remained the ruling party’s candidate.
“There is a false belief that associates cancer with death,” he said. “That’s not how it is, because you can overcome it with love, and the president has a bounty of that.”
Chavez is expected to travel to Cuba on Friday or Saturday, Cabello said.
Javier Corrales, a political science professor at Amherst College in the United States, said Chavez is now, finally, heeding medical advice after insisting on maintaining a physically demanding schedule of travel and marathon speeches.
But is he also listening to political advice about naming a successor?
“The key question is whether he is beginning to pay attention to advice from all those forces, ranging from family members to political operators, telling him to come forward with a succession plan,” Corrales said.
There are no obvious choices, since Chavez has constantly demoted anyone who could outshine him, Corrales added.
