Chavez can’t return to home in time, Venezuela delays inauguration

Caracas: Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez cannot return home in time for his inauguration and so will take the oath of office at a later date before the Supreme Court, the government announced.
The announcement confirming that Chavez, 58, is too sick to make it back in time for the January 10 inauguration came in a letter to the National Assembly from Vice President Nicolas Maduro.
“According to the recommendation of the medical team… the process of post-operative recover must extend beyond January 10 of the current year, reason for which he he will not be able to appear on that date before the National Assembly,” said the letter, read out by National Assembly Speaker Diosdado Cabello.
“I do not know what the judges of the Supreme Court are waiting for. Right now in Venezuela, without any doubt whatsoever, a constitutional conflict has arisen,” opposition leader and former presidential candidate Henrique Capriles said.
The government says the swearing-in is a mere formality that can be delayed, but the opposition says he must at least be declared temporarily incapacitated and replaced on an interim basis by the National Assembly speaker.
Capriles also urged Latin American leaders — Chavez has long been the figurehead of the anti-US left in the region — to stay away from a rally convened by the government for Thursday in place of the inauguration.
So far Uruguay’s President Jose Mujica, Bolivia’s President Evo Morales and Foreign Minister Ricardo Patino of Ecuador are the only ones to confirm their attendance.
“Chavez’s health is no longer in our hands,” said Mujica in an interview with the Montevideo newspaper La Republica. “Our function is to back the government and people of Venezuela.”