Chávez’s Return is Obstacle for Venezuela’s Embattled Opposition
Chávez’s Return is Obstacle for Venezuela’s Embattled Opposition
AS/COA’s Eric Farnsworth points out to a potential change of political approach by President Hugo Chávez’s opposition upon his surprise arrival in Venezuela.
CARACAS -- When Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez was hustled out of a Cuban hospital on Monday and into a 15-story medical center near downtown Caracas, little changed. Publicly, the ailing leader still hasn’t been heard from or seen in the flesh for almost 70 days, and his administration still claims he’s in charge.
But the transfer, which came unannounced and under the cover of dark, was a political ground shift for an embattled opposition that has been trying to recover from two high-profile losses even as it steels itself to face an eventual Chávez successor.
Over the past two months, as Chávez underwent a fourth round of cancer surgery in Cuba, the opposition had been gaining traction with its claims that his absence proved he was too ill to run the country.
But his surprise return Monday has undermined those arguments, analysts said.
“The opposition had been increasingly strident in its calls for him to return from Venezuela, as proof that he’s alive, proof that he can govern, and he’s done that now,” said Eric Farnsworth, vice president of the Council of the Americas and the Americas Society. “The opposition is going to have to recalibrate its approach.”
Chávez’s homecoming is being trumpeted in the state-run press, and has lifted hopes among his followers. Vice President Nicolás Maduro has described him as being “conscious” and “happy,” but there are reasons to worry....
