CARACAS: Venezuela called off public New Year's Eve festivities on Monday and social media sizzled with worry after the government said cancer-stricken President Hugo Chavez had taken a turn for the worse.
The streets of Caracas were quiet as front page headlines relayed that Chavez had developed "new complications" from a respiratory infection after undergoing his fourth cancer-related surgery, on December 11 in Havana.
His vice president and political heir, Nicolas Maduro, broke the news from Havana on Sunday night, saying the condition of the firebrand leader was delicate and that he faced an uphill battle.
Chavez, the face of the Latin American left for more than a decade and a fierce critic of what he calls US imperialism, has been in power since 1999 in Venezuela, an OPEC member that sits on top of the world's largest proven oil reserves. He won a new six-year term in October elections.
For many Venezuelans, a holiday season without their ubiquitous comandante just wasn't the same.
"We have never had a Christmas like this. Only God knows what will happen with him and with us," said 70-year-old retiree Miguel Enrique as he prepared to attend Mass.
Authorities canceled a New Year's eve concert in a downtown plaza and Information Minister Ernesto Villegas urged families "to ring in the New Year at home, praying and expressing hope for the health" of Chavez.
Crews were taking down the stage at the concert site. Passers-by watched, looking sad.
Chavez announced in late June of last year that he had been diagnosed with cancer, but did not say where or how bad it was. He has since undergone four operations, and various rounds of chemo and radiation therapy, even though in July of this year he had declared himself totally cancer-free.
He said then that the disease would not hinder him from campaigning for the October election. But on the trail he did appear less frequently than in previous polls, and when it was all over said that his condition had in fact slowed him down. He won by a 10-point margin over opposition candidate Henrique Capriles, a young state governor.
On Monday on Twitter, which is extremely popular here, hashtags translating into expressions such as "Chavez will live and conquer" and "I love Chavez" were aplenty.
A person who signed as NeriColmenares described the loquacious former paratrooper in almost messianic terms.
"Chavez will live and will conquer because he is a man who turned into a nation, into spirit, into struggle. He has the power to confront all the torments of life."
But Chavez is also deeply polarizing, even though he has ruled for nearly 14 years, and his detractors spoke out.
"I do not want Chavez to die. We would look really bad as a country if a disease had to do our job of removing him from power," one Enrique Vasquez wrote.
Chavez, 58, is scheduled to be sworn in on January 10. But his ill health has raised concerns that he won't be well enough in time for the inauguration, if ever.
Under Venezuela's constitution, a presidential election must be held within 30 days if the head of state is incapacitated or dies before his inauguration or within the first four years of his term.
But Chavez's government has said the inauguration can be postponed if the president is not fit enough to be sworn in.
It is trying to work out how to "resolve that obstacle," according to political analyst Luis Vicente Leon of the polling firm Datanalisis who said it was clear now that Chavez was in a critical condition.
As the constitution says he must be sworn in on January 10, "anything else will be hard to sell without it being construed as an institutional coup," Leon said.
But Maduro and parliament speaker Diosdado Cabello -- who would take over temporarily, pending new elections, if Chavez dies or is incapacitated -- have left the door open for Chavez to be sworn in later by the Supreme Court.
Cabello has even said that new elections will not be convened on January 10, nor will he himself take over temporarily if Chavez is out of the picture.
Veppex, a Miami-based association of 25,000 Venezuelans living outside their country as refugees or political exiles, insisted the constitution must be respected verbatim and new elections held if Chavez is indisposed.
Capriles, Venezuela's most prominent opposition leader, was re-elected earlier this month as governor of the key state of Miranda after providing Chavez with the sternest political test of his 13-year rule.
In the October 7 election, Chavez won 54 percent of the vote compared to 45 percent for Capriles -- but some opinion polls had put the candidates in a virtual tie, raising opposition hopes of a long-awaited victory.
In his televised announcement Sunday from Havana, Maduro spoke alongside one of Chavez's daughters, Rosa Virginia, and other prominent Venezuelans.
Hours later Villegas, the information minister, went on TV to deny rumors circulating on social media that Chavez had in fact already died.
"Do you think the daughter could have sat there, so peacefully, during that appearance if that were the case?" the minister asked.
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