PrintJune 2, 2009
Chavez a no-show
Last weekend, Hugo Chavez was celebrating the 10 years of his weekly TV program Alo Presidente with 4 day marathon starting last Thursday. It didn't work out too well.
Thursday: two "shows" (3 hours and 5 hours)
Friday: one show (6 hours)
Saturday, cancelled. No reason given.
Sunday, cancelled for "Technical reasons" with no further elaboration.
Sunday's was supposed to be the grand finale including a visit of Evo Morales (president of Bolivia) and then both presidents would continue to El Salvador where Monday (yesterday) was inaugurated the first leftist (former guerrilla) president in the history of El Salvador, so all the usual suspects were coming (including Hillary).
Well, Evo announced Saturday afternoon he wasn't coming to Caracas on Sunday and then on Sunday announced he wasn't going to El Salvador either.
Chavez never showed up in El Salvador yesterday, his Secretary of State Nicolas Maduro attended (Maduro by the way is a former driver of the Caracas subways, those are his credentials for the job of Sexretary of State).
In El Salvador, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega (a close ally of Chavez) made a statement that Chavez did not show up because of security concerns.
And that is all we know. Since the end of Friday's brodcast no one has seen or heard of Chavez. Very unusual.
Venezuela under Chavez is a continuing soap opera.
