CARACAS — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez stayed on his sickbed in Cuba on Thursday while supporters rallied in his honor on the day he should have been sworn in for a new six-year term in the South American OPEC nation. The postponement of the inauguration, a first in Venezuelan history, has laid bare the gravity of Chavez's condition after complications from a fourth cancer operation in his pelvic area. It has also left his chosen heir, Vice President Nicolas Maduro — a former bus driver who shares his boss's radical socialist views — in charge of day-to-day government until there is clarity over whether Chavez will recover. “People traveling on foot, the humble, the patriots ... we're going to demonstrate, one proud people with one slogan: we are all Chavez!” Maduro said, rallying supporters. The president, whose legendary energy and garrulous dominance of the airwaves had often made him seem omnipresent in Venezuela since taking power in 1999, has not been seen in public nor heard from since his surgery on Dec. 11. Venezuela's 29 million people are anxiously watching what could be the last chapter in the extraordinary life of Chavez, who grew up in a rural shack and went on to become one of the world's best-known and most controversial heads of state. The saga also has huge implications for the likes of Cuba and other leftist allies in Latin America that have benefited for years from Chavez's subsidized oil and other largesse. A clutch of foreign friends, including the presidents of Uruguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua, were attending Thursday's events in Caracas despite Chavez's absence. “We have to express our solidarity at this enormously difficult time for a man who remembered my people, who did not turn his back,” said Uruguayan President Jose Mujica, referring to Chavez's aid policies around Latin America. “You hardly see that sort of solidarity anywhere in the world ... Chavez's mark is a deep one, and let's hope he can overcome illness,” the former leftist guerrilla told Telesur, a TV network set up by Chavez to counter Western media influence. Red-clad supporters began arriving in the streets around the presidential palace in the early morning, waving banners and photos of Chavez, and chanting some of his best-known slogans. The Miraflores palace has been the scene of some of the biggest dramas of Chavez's rule, from protests in 2002 and a coup that toppled him briefly, to speeches after election wins and emotional returns from previous cancer treatments in Havana. – Reuters
