Chavez absence before inauguration fuels doubts

Chavez health: VP Nicolas Maduro, left, has been designated successor

REUTERS/SCANPIX

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By News Wires

 07 January 2013 17:10 GMT

Uncertainty is growing about who will lead Venezuela after Thursday, when an ailing President Hugo Chavez is increasingly unlikely to fulfil his duty to be sworn in after being re-elected in October.

Venezuelans have gone nearly a month without hearing or seeing from Chavez, who the government says is in "delicate" but stable condition at a medical center in Cuba following cancer surgery in early December, Dow Jones reported.

For the Chavez-led socialist government, which has held power since 1999, the answer is clear: Chavez won the October elections handily, they say, so he will continue his duties as president without a formal swearing-in ceremony Thursday.

That is despite the president's delicate condition in Havana, with a "severe pulmonary infection."

Vice President Nicolas Maduro, a Chavez…

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