{{Senior aides and relatives of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez countered on Friday a crescendo of rumors that the socialist president may be dead from cancer, saying he was still battling for his life.}}<\/p>\n
“There he is, continuing his fight, his battle, and we are sure of victory!” his older brother Adan Chavez, the governor of Barinas state, told cheering supporters.<\/p>\n
Speculation about Chavez, 58, hit fever pitch this week, fed in part by assertions from Panama’s former ambassador to the Organization of American States (OAS), Guillermo Cochez, that the Venezuelan leader had died.<\/p>\n
“The launching of absurd and bizarre rumors by the right wing simply discredits them and isolates them further from the people,” said Chavez’s son-in-law Jorge Arreaza, adding that the president was “calm” in a hospital with his family and doctors.<\/p>\n
Apart from one set of photos showing Chavez lying in a Havana hospital bed, he has not been seen nor heard from in public since Dec. 11 surgery in Cuba, his fourth operation.<\/p>\n
The president made a surprise pre-dawn return to a military hospital in Caracas last week, with none of the fanfare that had accompanied his previous homecomings after treatment.<\/p>\n
Vice President Nicolas Maduro, the OPEC nation’s de facto leader and Chavez’s preferred successor, urged Venezuelans to stay calm, patient and respectful of the president’s state.<\/p>\n
“The treatments Commander Chavez is receiving are tough, but he is stronger than them,” Maduro said after a Catholic Mass in Chavez’s honor at a chapel in the hospital.<\/p>\n
“He’s in good spirits, battling … . Leave him in peace. He deserves respect for his treatments, because he’s a man who has given everything for our fatherland.”<\/p>\n
Opposition politicians accuse the government of being deceitful about Chavez’s condition, and compare the secrecy over his medical details with the transparency shown by other Latin American leaders who have suffered cancer.<\/p>\n
“Maduro has lied repeatedly to the president’s supporters and to Venezuelans about his real situation,” opposition leader Henrique Capriles said on Friday. <\/p>\n
“Let’s see how they explain to the nation in coming days all the lies they have told.”<\/p>\n
Panamanian diplomat Cochez said Chavez’s relatives had switched off his life support several days ago after he had been in a vegetative state since the end of December. He challenged officials to prove him wrong by showing the president in public.<\/p>\n
{wirestory}<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Senior aides and relatives of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez countered on Friday a crescendo of rumors that the socialist president may be dead from cancer, saying he was still battling for his life.}} “There he is, continuing his fight, his battle, and we are sure of victory!” his older brother Adan Chavez, the governor of Barinas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-6278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-internationl","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6278"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6278"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}