Maduro Says Chávez as a Bird Blessed His Bid to Head Venezuela
Maduro Says Chávez as a Bird Blessed His Bid to Head Venezuela
AS/COA’s Eric Farnsworth comments on interim leader Nicolás Maduro’s claim of having been blessed by the deceased Hugo Chávez to head Venezuela and carry his socialist mantle.
Acting President Nicolás Maduro said Hugo Chávez gave his blessing through a small bird on the first day of his official campaign for the presidency as he looks to capitalize on the popularity of the former socialist leader.
Maduro, speaking from Chávez’s home state of Barinas one month after the ex-president’s death, said he went to a chapel to pray when the bird appeared and circled him three times before whistling to him.
“I felt his spirit,” Maduro said in a televised speech broadcast from Chávez’s former home in the town of Sabaneta. “I felt him there as though he were giving us a blessing, saying to us: ‘Today the battle begins. Onwards to victory. You have our blessing.’”
Maduro, whom Chávez named as his successor days before flying to Cuba for an operation to treat an undisclosed form of cancer, is pitted against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. The former bus driver and union leader who served as foreign minister for six years has called Chávez the “redeemer of the poor” and that he had earned a place in heaven alongside Jesus Christ.
“It is very clear what’s going on here,” said Washington- based Eric Farnsworth, vice president at the Council of the Americas. “He’s trying to claim the mantle of divinity, of being touched by the departed Chavez. The message is anyone who doesn’t vote for Maduro is voting against the wishes of the departed leader….”
