Posted on 03/06/2013 10:55:39 AM PST by JerseyanExile
In the flesh he seemed indestructible. Hugo Chávez was not especially tall, but he was built like one of the tanks he once commanded. He was possessed of seemingly inexhaustible energy. He travelled incessantly, both around his vast country and abroad. Each Sunday he would host live television shows lasting up to 12 hours. He would ring up ministers in the early hours of the morning to harangue them. For 14 years, everything that happened in Venezuela passed through his hands, or so he liked to think.
Yet Mr Chávez turned out to have been as reckless with his health as with his country’s economy and its democracy. Those late nights were fuelled by dozens of cups of sweet Venezuelan coffee. When in mid-2011 he revealed that he had been operated on for cancer, the lack of detail (“a baseball-sized tumour in the pelvic region”) suggested that the diagnosis had come late. He turned down an offer of care from a Brazilian hospital that has recently cured three Latin American presidents of cancer, preferring treatment in Cuba, where his condition could be kept secret.
To the end, Mr Chávez’s rule was narcissistic, with country and constitution subordinated to his whim. In the tradition of the Latin American caudillo, he wanted to die with his boots on. When he was too ill to be sworn in for his new term on January 10th, his officials, with Cuban support, resolved to disregard the constitution that he himself had pushed through in 1999 and declared that the inauguration could happen at a later date. It will be harder for them to avoid the constitution’s requirement that in the event of the president’s death an election must be held within 30 days (though in practice a poll may be difficult to organise in such...
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
I wish our esteaming (pile) of president could enjoy the same leadership abilities as Hugo at this very moment.
He will soon enough. You can’t do the type damage he has with your nose up in the air without someone eventually knocking your block knocked off. Just no snipers or assassination attempts or the people will consider him a martyr or savior especially when he rises again in 3 days with horns out. He’ll do it to himself; just have to be patient. Every evil man falls from their throne eventually.
He will soon enough. You can’t do the type damage he has with your nose up in the air without someone eventually getting your block knocked off. Just no snipers or assassination attempts or the people will consider him a martyr or savior especially when he rises again in 3 days with horns out. He’ll do it to himself; just have to be patient. Every evil man falls from their throne eventually.
“When the army refused his order to use force to suppress the protests, the president surrendered his office; his most senior general told the nation he had resigned. But after a conservative business leader proclaimed himself president on April 12th and declared the constitution abolished, the army switched sides again and restored Mr Chávez to power.”
There went Our chance in Venezuela. The US should have backed the constitution abolishing conservative business leader when Chavez surrendered office.
” Hugo Chávez was not especially tall,”
Just saw a pic with him and Sean Penn and Penn is at least 2 inches taller and Penn is a fidget at 5”5”
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