Hugo Chavez Has Died.

At around 4pm local time yesterday the Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez finally lost his long battle with cancer and died aged 58.

An old school Communist style leader Chavez has always been a controversial figure. First elected in 1999 Chavez took power with a mandate to take on the very small number of wealthy families who had helped keep Venezuela poor despite the nations vast oil reserves. Obviously this made him hugely popular with poor Venezuelans who make up the vast majority of the population. However this also made Chavez deeply unpopular with that small group of extremely wealthy families. As a result Chavez faced a number of coup attempts most noticeably in 2002. These coup attempts were widely blamed on the United States. However I always thought it was more a case of South Americans using the skills they'd learnt during the School of the Americas rather then something the US was directly supporting. Sadly Chavez responded to these challenges his power by becoming ever more dictatorial and repressive shutting down TV stations that criticised him and jailing journalists and political opponents.

Most controversially Chavez responded to US President George W Bush's declaration of an "Axis of Evil" in the wake of the September 11th attacks by forming an Axis of Opposition to the US. This axis included many South American and Caribbean nations such as Cuba, Bolivia and Ecuador alongside much more controversial nations such as Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. So while Chavez's influence has waned significantly over the past few years his death dramatically alters the political calculus around some of the most important issues in the world at the moment.

Nowhere will the impact of Chavez's death be felt more keenly then in his native Venezuala where he enjoyed an almost god-like status. Hopefully what will happen now is that the Venezualan people will elect a new leader who will stick to Chavez's more noble ideals such as social justice while moving the country in a more free and democratic direction. However this will take time. Chavez's funeral is scheduled to take place on Friday (8/3/13) and an official seven day period of mourning has been declared. However in reality the actual mourning will likely take much longer. Then there is the time it will take to mobilise campaigns and infrastructure needed for an election to be held.

Therefore I have no problem with the Vice President Nicolas Maduro assuming temporary charge of the nation for the next month or two. If he then goes on to rule with an electoral mandate from the Venezuelan people then good luck to him.

16:45 on 6/3/13.