Even after death, Venezuela's Chavez gets choice of successor

3/6/2013

By FABIOLA SANCHEZ and FRANK BAJAK

Associated Press

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Even in death, Hugo Chavez's orders are being followed. The man he anointed to succeed him, Vice President Nicolas Maduro, will continue to run Venezuela as interim president and be the governing socialists' candidate in an election to be called within 30 days.

Foreign Minister Elias Jaua confirmed Tuesday, just hours after Maduro, tears running down his face, announced the death of Chavez, the larger-than-life former paratroop officer who had presided over Venezuela as virtually a one-man show for more than 14 years.

It was not immediately clear when the presidential vote would be.

Considerable funeral pageantry was expected to honor Chavez, the political impresario widely adored among Venezuela's poor for putting the oil-rich state in their service.

Seven days of mourning were declared, all school was suspended for the week and friendly heads of state were expected in this economically challenged and violence-afflicted nation for an elaborate funeral Friday.

Venezuela's constitution specifies the speaker of the National Assembly, currently Diosdado Cabello, should assume the interim presidency if a president can't be sworn in.

But the officials left in charge by Chavez before he went to Cuba in December for his fourth cancer surgery in a little less than two years have not been especially assiduous about heeding the constitution, and human rights and free speech activists are concerned they will flaunt the rule of law.

Some in anguish, some in fear, Venezuelans raced for home and stocked up on food and water after the government announced Chavez's death, declining to say what exactly killed him. On Monday night, the government had said the president had been weakened by a severe, new respiratory infection.

Tuesday was a day fraught with mixed signals, some foreboding. Just a few hours before announcing Chavez's death, Maduro virulently accused enemies, domestic and foreign and clearly including the United States, of trying to undermine Venezuelan democracy. The government said two U.S. military attaches had been expelled for allegedly trying to destabilize the nation.

But in announcing that the president was dead, Maduro shifted tone, calling on Venezuelans to be "dignified heirs of the giant man."

"Let there be no weakness, no violence. Let there be no hate. In our hearts there should only be one sentiment: Love. Love, peace and discipline."

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles, who lost to Chavez in the October presidential election and widely is expected to be the opposition's candidate to oppose Maduro, was conciliatory in a televised address.

"This is not the moment to highlight what separates us," Capriles said. "This is not the hour for differences; it is the hour for union, it is the hour for peace."

Capriles, the youthful governor of Miranda state, has been feuding bitterly with Maduro and other Chavez loyalists who accused him of conspiring with far-right U.S. forces to undermine the revolution.

Across downtown Caracas, shops and restaurants begin closing and Venezuelans hustled for home, some even breaking into a run. Many looked anguished and incredulous.

"I feel a sorrow so big I can't speak," said Yamilina Barrios, a 39-year-old clerk who works in the Industry Ministry, her face covered in tears. "He was the best this country had."

Others wished Chavez's departure had come through the ballot box.

Carlos Quijada, a 38-year-old economist, said that "now there is a lot of uncertainty about what will happen."

He said a peaceful transition depends on the government.

"If it behaves democratically we should not have many problems," Quijada said.

Like most Venezuelans, he said his big concern is ending violent crime that afflicts all strata of society, from the poor who Chavez wooed with state largesse to the economic elite at the core of the political opposition.

Venezuela has the world's second-highest murder rate after Honduras -- 56 people for every 100,000 according to government figures, which nongovernmental groups say are understated.

Late Tuesday, the armed forces chief, Gen. Wilmer Barrientos, reported "complete calm" in the country.

But there had been several incidents of political violence.

In one, a group of masked, helmeted men on motorcycles, some brandishing revolvers, attacked approximately 40 students who had been protesting for more than a week near the Supreme Court building to demand the government give more information about Chavez's health.

The attackers, who didn't wear clothing identifying any political allegiance, burned the students' tents and scattered their food just minutes after Chavez's death was announced.

"They burned everything we had," said student leader Gaby Arellano. She said she saw four of the attackers with pistols but none fired a shot.

Outside the military hospital where Chavez's body was visited by loved ones and allies, an angry crowd attacked a Colombian TV reporter.

"They beat us with helmets, with sticks, men, women, adults," Carmen Andrea Rengifo said on RCN TV. Video images showed her bleeding above the forehead but she was not seriously injured.

Maduro and other government officials recently have railed against international media for allegedly reporting rumors about Chavez's health, although RCN wasn't one of those criticized.

After nightfall, several hundred people gathered at Bolivar Square, a symbolic place for Chavistas because it has a huge 30-foot-tall statue of Simon Bolivar, the 19th century independence hero whom Chavez claimed as his chief inspiration.

Some arrived singing Venezuela's national anthem and holding up posters of Chavez.

One man began shouting through a megaphone a warning to the opposition: "They won't return." The crowd then joined in, chanting: "They won't return."

Chavez leaves behind a political movement firmly in control of a nation that human rights activist Liliana Ortega, director of the non-governmental group COFAVIC, describes as a badly deteriorated state where institutions such as the police, courts and prosecutor's offices have been converted into tools of political persecution and where most media are firmly controlled by the government.

Maduro, whose government role had grown after Chavez went to Cuba for treatment, was belligerent early Tuesday. He reported the expulsion of one of the two U.S. attaches, and also said "we have no doubt" Chavez's cancer, first diagnosed in June 2011, was induced by "the historical enemies of our homeland."

Maduro compared the situation to the death of the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, claiming Arafat was "inoculated with an illness" and said a "scientific commission will prove that Comandante Chavez was attacked with this illness."