Chávez holds on to leadership reins as he flies to Cuba for treatment

Venezuela left without interim president as leader receives chemotherapy, sparking fears about future government He had been home for less than two weeks. Long enough to milk the adulation from his fanbase. Not long enough to dispel the cloud of uncertainty over Venezuela’s future. Now that cloud has become darker with the news that Hugo Chávez is to return to Cuba for chemotherapy to treat his abdominal cancer, the severity of which is still unknown. As he flew out of Caracas at the weekend, Chávez left both friends and foes speculating about the future of Venezuela – and wondering if chavismo can survive without its namesake and founder. Chávez, who did not specify a return date, left the vice-president, Elías Jaua, and his minister of finance, Jorge Giordani, in charge of carrying out his instructions in his absence. But, tellingly, neither was sworn in as interim president. Constitutionally speaking, Chávez can be away for up to 180 days, at which point a vice-president would be sworn in to act as president until the next elections, due in December 2012. In reality, few believe Venezuela can be governed from afar for long. Many have interpreted Chávez’s refusal to name just one successor, and his vehement calls for unity, as a clear sign that the fissures within chavismo run deeper than chavistas themselves want to admit. For the political analyst John Magdaleno, the official announcement of Chávez’s cancer brought to light the many factions within chavismo. “It is a point of no return, whereby the small factions are not going to stop vying for the overall leadership,” he said. For the past 12 years, Chávez has amalgamated a coalition of political actors from across the spectrum under his homemade brand of populist ideology that mixes socialist programmes with Bolivarian instincts and strong anti-imperialist rhetoric aimed chiefly at the main export market for Venezuela’s biggest revenue earner, oil. Amid the uncertainty swirling in Caracas are three questions. The first involves the severity of Chávez’s illness and the extent of any likely incapacitation. On this, the president has given few hints. In one of the few cryptic references to his illness, he has deemed his cancer “as one of the best, not the kind that many [of my enemies] would wish upon me”. Before he left at the weekend, he told supporters that the cancer was not advanced. “No other malignant cell has been detected in my body,” he said. A former vice-president, José Vicente Rangel, said in a recent interview that finding a successor to Chávez would not be necessary because although “Chávez is ill, his condition is not critical”. But the illness has focused attention on the fact that at some point Venezuela will have a new leader. And so the second question: who might succeed him? Before Chávez’s unexpected return from Cuba on 4 July, the names of successors within chavismo ranged from the logical vice-president Jaua to the constitutionally impossible Adán Chávez, his brother and the governor of their home state, Barinas, and Chávez’s own daughter, Ma Gabriela, who more often accompanies Chávez in his public appearances. The leader himself has given few clues. Javier Corrales, professor of political science at Amherst College in Massachusetts, said Chávez could easily raise the profile of a chosen heir if it became clear that he could not carry on as president. “Chávez could do miracles, including raising

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