An uncertain future.

After winning a third 6 year term as President of Venezuela in October Hugo Chavez is back in Havana for treatment of a cancer in his pelvis. Chavez has been president since 1998 and was supposed to have stepped down after 2 terms but changed the constitution via a referendum to allow him to stand for as many times as he wished. His cancer was first discovered in June 2011 when he underwent an operation for a pelvic abscess while on a visit to Cuba, which was later confirmed to be cancerous. The type of cancer has been kept a secret because he did not want the opposition to claim that he was unfit to stand for a third term but the speculation is that it is an aggressive form of sarcoma and that his days are numbered. He had chemotherapy at a military hospital in Caracas and announced that he was cured but had to undergo another surgery in Havana in February 2012. You have to admire the determination, guts and stamina of the man that he fought a vigorous campaign to win in October. However, by December he said that his cancer had returned and underwent a third operation lasting for 6 hours on 11 December. He has not been seen for over a month and is said to be on a ventilator because of a severe lung infection. For the first time he has designated his Vice President, Nicolas Maduro as his successor. Yesterday Chavez was to have been sworn in but was too ill leading the opposition to demand fresh elections but the Supreme Court said that he can be sworn in at a later date. So his supporters held a party instead. Looking from the outside Chavez appears to be a buffoon, making long speeches lasting for hours, singing and dancing on stage and daring the US to attack his country. Among his supporters he is a star and the danger is that there maybe a dangerous power vacuum if he dies. He started a socialist revolution with the state controlling the economy. Money from oil has been used to build houses for the poor and to offer free education and healthcare to the poor by bringing in teachers and doctors from Cuba. Naturally the people see him as some sort of saviour. Trouble with populist spending is that it is difficult to control as we see in India. Deficit is at $150 billion and inflation rate is at 30% which will naturally hit the poor the hardest. Corruption and crime rates are some of the highest in the world. Caracas has the second highest homicide rate for cities in the world at 92 per 100,000 population. In desperation Chavez tried a dual exchange rate for the currency in 2010. For essential items such as food medicines and industrial machinery the rate was 2.6 Bolivars to the dollar whereas for non essential items such as cars and telephones the rate was 4.3 Bolivars to the dollar. Apparently he was about to devalue the Bolivar again and increase petrol prices. A buffoon, inflation, crime, corruption, sounds like India doesn't it?