For the first time since 1998, Hugo Chavez isn’t on Venezuela’s presidential ballot. Last time we checked, he was dead.
So what’s his face doing on all those campaign posters? Why do so many political rallies begin with a recording of Chavez singing the national anthem? What’s with the television ad in which Chavez’s smiling visage winks from the heavens?
It’s all designed to drum up votes for Chavez’s hand-picked successor, interim President Whatsisname.
Nicolas Maduro kicked off his campaign last month from Chavez’s childhood home. He refers to himself as Chavez’s “son” and to the party faithful as “apostles.” He speaks reverently of Chavez, calling him a “redeemer” and even suggesting he now sits alongside Christ.
Maduro recently told a story of a little bird that flew overhead as he prayed shortly after the president’s death. “I felt his spirit, like a blessing,” he said, pausing to make birdlike tweeting and flapping noises. “It said, ‘The battle starts today, onward to victory, you have my blessing.’”
Maduro, who was Chavez’s foreign minister for six years before becoming vice president last year, wants Venezuelans to remember that he was anointed by the ailing president. What he doesn’t want to talk about is the steaming pile of problems the sainted Chavez left behind.
While opposition candidate Henrique Capriles talks about cutting off billions in oil subsidies to Cuba and using that money to repair Venezuela’s economy, Maduro promises to continue the unsustainable social “missions” that bought Chavez the hearts of the country’s poor.
While Capriles talks about better ties with the United States, Maduro parrots Chavez’s claim that the Yankees are trying to destabilize Latin America. (U.S. agents, in fact, are plotting to kill both candidates, Maduro says, and might have injected Chavez with the cancer that killed him.)
While Capriles talks about the country’s alarmingly high murder rate, Maduro says, “The truth is that capitalism is to blame for the violence in this country.”
Coming up on Sunday’s election, Maduro is leading by double digits in the polls.
He’s still not talking about food shortages, electrical blackouts or 23 percent unemployment. It’s all Chavez.
ChavezChavezChavezChavezChavez.
Anonymous detractors maintain a website — madurodice.com (Spanish for “Maduro says”) — that claims to track how many times the candidate has mentioned Chavez on radio or TV. As of Thursday, it was up to more than 7,100, or more than 200 times a day.
We get it, we get it. He’s marketing himself as the second coming of Hugo Chavez.
We just don’t get why voters would buy it.
