[UPDATED] The major problem for Chavez in his quest for eternal presidency is that he has nothing to show for it. And even worse, he has run out of ideas or people to try to solve the problems of the country. In other words: he is impotent in front of the mounting problems of the country because he has no idea on how to solve them and he is surrounded by a group of corrupt and incompetent people.
What to do to try to wing it and get the nod for another 6 years in 2012 without cheating too much? Those are two long years..........
Campaign. That is the only thing Chavez knows how to do, to campaign for elections. In 12 years in power that is the lone thing (along letting the public treasury be plundered) for which he has shown any skill. True, his skills would not have helped him much had not be able to take public money to run his private campaign and buy votes, but let's not be mean: the guy knows how to campaign and it is not his fault that we are basically a wretched country that is willing to succumb to his brand of political trash.
The problem here is that he is already campaigning and alone and the elections are in December 2012. Thus, like any spoiled brat, he demands to be given a playmate so that he can impose his rules and win.
You think I am kidding? That is exactly what he did yesterday, in the most vulgar form, by demanding that the opposition file already its candidate so they can start slugging it off. For two years.
That is the true measure of a political rat: to forget about managing the country and solving its problems, much preferring to create a permanent scandal to distract from the reality. Because there is another reality he wants to evade: the new National Assembly where in spite of all Chavez measures and tricks, the opposition is slowly but surely making political inroads that cannot be hidden no matter how much artful chavista camera shots are attempted in ANTV.
My only question here is why is the MUD taking so much time to hit that easy ball out of the park?
UPDATE
From the comment question with Carolina I actually think I discovered another good reason for Chavez idiotic remark.
Since he has been in office Chavez has made good use of a chronic weakness of the opposition that is used to take its vacation in December like the rest of the country. Chavez never goes on vacation and has used December to make stunning announcements without any one across the aisle available to reply.
This last year as he was making his legislative coup December was not as useful to him as usual because there was in town the newly elected 63 representatives of the opposition. There was a retort to many of his utterances and he did not benefit from the December recess to score points as he used to do.
Since Chavez is a good campaigner, the lone thing as he can do as pointed above, he must have realized that the election of an opposition unity candidate in December, or even a primary campaign through December, will steal all of his thunder in December when he needs it the most for his campaign. I mean, being as usual the only one not in campaign while distributing freebees to buy votes.
Thus his anguish to try to have that candidate named earlier, in addition probably of encouraging people like AD or Copei to postpone the election of a candidate by March or later.
I think I need to make a short entry for this in Spanish......