Where's Hugo?

IBD Editorials ^ | June 24, 2011 | Staff

[Kaslin]

Americas: If anyone out there still thinks Venezuela is a democracy, the silence and secrecy of Hugo Chavez's long absence for an undisclosed ailment ends that idea. It's the act of a dictator. How about treating him like one?

Photos of the Venezuelan strongman have shown him looking out of sorts for months — withering weight, reddening complexion, a broken knee, all of which had been dismissed by his secretive presidential ministry as nothing serious.

Now that he's in a full-blown health crisis, convalescing in a Cuban hospital for the past 20 days, there's little doubt he's got bigger problems than that.

His minions claim he's just ruling Venezuela from Havana, as if there was nothing bizarre about that. They have yet to make a single official announcement about why the elected leader of a supposed democracy is missing or what he has that amounts to a state secret.

This is the sort of uncertainty seen among dictators such as Kim Jong Il, Hafez al-Assad or Chavez's host, Fidel Castro. Nothing makes a dictator more paranoid than speculation about health issues — because it amounts to a first sign a dictator is no longer immortal.

Powerless Venezuelans in Caracas outwardly seem indifferent. But that's not the case for Chavez's own supporters as well as the 40,000 Cuban "advisers" buried in Chavez's ministries and "social programs" in Caracas. These players are making contingency plans and jockeying for advantage. And in this case, the stakes are unusually high because two regimes — Cuba and Venezuela — stand to fall if Chavez can no longer rule.

[lurk]

Memo to Chavez/Castro groupies in Venezuela: things change.

You might want to have your bags and passport sitting by the front door.

[yoe]

If the U.S. can intervene in Libya, which provides Europe oil, why so indifferent toward a major U.S. supplier?

All that's seen out of the Obama administration to this challenge is the fiction that Venezuela is a democracy. A sick Chavez suggests something very different.

Don't expect too much from Obama, he shy's away from trashing anyone except the good 'ol USA.

[Outlaw Woman]

*Headline Only*

Hopefully dead...

[Leo Carpathian]

He is in the Havana Polyclinic waiting room, waiting for his turn to see da doktor.

[Humble Servant]

Don’t get your hopes up, you Bloodthirsty Commiehaters.

I hear those Cubans can do amazing things with silly putty, duct tape, and cigar juice.

[Humble Servant]

In fact, isn’t that what Michael Moore is mostly made of?

[dusttoyou]

The taxidermist that fixed up fidel should have hugo all done up nicely in the next week or so.

[Some Fat Guy in L.A.]

Being at the top of the commie totem pole may be hazardous to your health.

[maica]

Powerless Venezuelans in Caracas outwardly seem indifferent. But that's not the case for Chavez's own supporters as well as the 40,000 Cuban "advisers" buried in Chavez's ministries and "social programs" in Caracas. These players are making contingency plans and jockeying for advantage. And in this case, the stakes are unusually high because two regimes — Cuba and Venezuela — stand to fall if Chavez can no longer rule.

Bill, Hillary, and Barack's whole regime will be jockeying for advantage also to support whoever is the most socialist of the eventual successors in both countries. The only chance for our hemisphere to rid itself of these two cancers is for Hugo and Fidel to live until 2013, and for a total change in the WH.

[hal ogen]

While I wish no ill upon anyone...this illness couldn’t happen to a better putz.

[Shady]

Mysterious that it is happening right when the Statists want to pull the trigger...