CARACAS, Venezuela — Venezuela’s vice president said Friday that President Hugo Chavez could be sworn in by the Supreme Court later if he’s not able to take the oath of office next week before lawmakers because of his struggle with cancer.
Vice President Nicolas Maduro made the comment in a televised interview Friday night, dismissing the argument by some opposition leaders that new elections must be called if Chavez doesn’t take office as scheduled Thursday.
Maduro says Chavez, as a re-elected president, remains in office beyond the inauguration date stipulated in the constitution and could be sworn in if necessary before the Supreme Court at a date to be determined.
“The formality of his swearing-in can be resolved before the Supreme Court of Justice, at the time [the court] deems in coordination with the head of state, Commander Hugo Chavez,” Maduro said.
As for the opposition, Maduro said, “they should respect our constitution.” The vice president held up a small copy of the constitution and read aloud passages relating to such procedures.
Opposition leaders have demanded that the government provide more-specific information about Chavez’s condition. They say that if the president doesn’t return to Venezuela by inauguration day, the president of the National Assembly should take over the presidency on an interim basis. But Maduro echoed other Chavez allies in suggesting that the inauguration date is not a hard deadline and that the president should be given more time torecover from his cancer surgery if needed.
“Maduro’s comments are not surprising. The government holds all the cards in the current situation, particularly given the compassion for Chavez’s serious illness. It has interpreted the constitution loosely, to its own political advantage,” said Michael Shifter, president of the Inter-American Dialogue think tank in Washington. “In this way Maduro is able to buy some time, assert his authority and rally support within Chavismo. He puts the opposition on notice and throws it off balance.”
As for Chavez, Maduro reiterated that the president is fighting a “complex” health battle, but expressed hope that eventually “we’ll see him and we’ll hear him.”
“He has a right to rest and tranquility, and to recuperate,” Maduro said on state television, speaking with Information Minister Ernesto Villegas.
“The president right now is the exercising president. He has his government formed,” Maduro said. He read a part of the constitution detailing procedures for declaring an “absolute absence” of the president, which would trigger a new election within 30 days, and declared that “none of these grounds can be raised by the Venezuelan opposition.”
The Venezuelan Constitution says the presidential oath should be taken Jan. 10 before the National Assembly. It also says that if the president is unable to be sworn in before the National Assembly, he may take the oath of office before the Supreme Court, and some legal experts have noted that the sentence mentioning the court does not mention a date.
Others disagree. Ruben Ortiz, a lawyer and opposition supporter, argued that Maduro is wrong and that under theconstitution the inauguration date can’t be postponed.
If Chavez is not in Caracas to be sworn in on Thursday, Ortiz said in a phone interview, “the president of the National Assembly should take charge.” He added that “there is a formal separation between one term and the other.”
But Shifter said the opposition is on the defensive, with its only tactic being to insist that Jan. 10 is the established date.
“Chavez controls all the key institutions, and it’s doubtful that most Venezuelans will get too upset about defying what seems a fairly minor constitutional provision,” Shifter said. “Attacking the government because it has no objection to the Supreme Court swearing in Chavez after Jan. 10 is not exactly a winning political strategy for the opposition.”
As for the government, he said, it appears to be playing its cards for its purposes. “Thegovernment wants more time, whether to see if Chavez gets better, or to consolidate their ranks and further splinter and demoralize the opposition,” Shifter said.
Venezuelan lawmakers will meet today in a session that could shed more light on what steps Chavez’s allies plan to take.
The government revealed this week that Chavez is fighting a severe lung infection and receiving treatment for “respiratory deficiency” more than three weeks after undergoing cancer surgery in Cuba.
Chavez hasn’t spoken publicly or been seen since his Dec. 11 operation in Cuba, and the latest announcement suggests a deepening crisis for the 58-year-old president.
The government’s account of Chavez’s complications raised the possibility that he might be breathing with the assistance of a machine. But the government did not address that question and didn’t give details of the president’s treatment.
Dr. Gustavo Medrano, a lung specialist at the Centro Medico hospital in Caracas, said he has seen similar cases in cancer patients who have undergone surgery, and “in general it’s very bad, above all after a surgery like the one they performed on him.
“I don’t know the magnitude of the infection he has, how much of his lungs have been compromised, how much other organs are being affected. That’s not clear,” Medrano said.
“What’s most likely is that he’s on mechanical ventilation,” Medrano added. However, he said, while respiratory deficiency means there is an abnormally low concentration of oxygen in the blood, it can be treated in various ways depending on the severity.
Dr. Michael Pishvaian, an oncologist at Georgetown University’s Lombardi Cancer Center in Washington, agreed that such respiratory infections can run the gamut from “a mild infection requiring antibiotics and supplemental oxygen to life-threatening respiratory complications.”
“It could be a very ominous sign,” Pishvaian said. He said it’s possible Chavez could be on “life support,” but added it’s impossible to be sure without more details.
Front Section, Pages 6 on 01/05/2013