The news tonight is about Chavez getting hip surgery for an abscess. Hip survgery for an abscess? And he was in a tour through Brazil, Ecuador and Cuba were conveniently the abscess was diagnosed so he could get emergency surgery while there?
I do not buy it. I think that he had something else, and that he planned all along to have surgery into his hip, knee, whatever under the excuse of hip abscess (appendectomy being one of the mildest forms). What this incident reveals is that Chavez does not trust whatsoever Venezuelan medicine and doctors. That is, he cannot find chavista specialists good enough to trust the presidential health to their hands. Goes to tell you..... Soon 13 years in office and he probably has dental work in Cuba too.....
And this reminded me something I read in the gossip column of Bocaranda to whom I usually give limited confidence, and refuse to follow in twitter as he will tweet all day long... In the Thursday edition he claimed that Chavez in confidence would have said the following:
I am sure that if they beat me, something that I doubt very much as the polls I have tell me otherwise, and in the unlikely case that I may have to surrender power, I am sure that within 6 months, at most one year, I woudl be brought back in triumph, carried on shoulders [of "el pueblo"?] becasue the mess, the ungovernableness [word?] and the lack of military support for the chosen one will turn the country into chaos.I will pass of course on the chaos idea since the country is ALREADY in chaos; as well as on the value of this assessment. What strikes me is the notion of Chavez that without military support one cannot rule a country. Political parties and real institutions count for nothing in his world. I cannot think of anything better to illustrate that Chavez is not, never was a democrat, that democracy for him was at best a tool to reach power and impose his vision of things as he kills democracy.
Certainly such a confidence, if indeed these words are true, explains a lot. For example, as a military felon without any noteworthy achievement in his past, the only way he had to make sure the army would be faithful to him was to corrupt it, to let them dip into any lucrative business of the state, and even to allow the Venezuelan army to become a major operator in the narco state that Chavez has been building.
Of course, Bocaranda misses the whole point, as enamored as he is of hismelf and his ability to ferret out gossip.
Indeed it is a sad world where Chavez lives that pushes him to act and speak as he does. But you know, he has no none else but himself to blame.