Americas Features

Leaders' illnesses cloud South America's newfound stability

By Veronica Sardon Jan 3, 2012, 14:09 GMT

A handout picture provided by Miraflores Press shows Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez speaking in Caracas, Venezuela, 27 December 2011. EPA/MIRAFLORES PRESS

Buenos Aires - South America prides itself these days in having stable governments that have allowed the region to strengthen and grow with healthier economies and political systems.

But leaders across several of the continent's 13 countries are coping with their own illnesses.

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is to undergo surgery Wednesday for thyroid cancer. On the same day, former Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva is scheduled to begin radiation therapy to treat a cancer of the larynx that has already been reduced through chemotherapy.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez made headlines in recent months, as he travelled back and forth to Cuba for treatment of an unspecified abdominal cancer.

Lula's successor, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, suffered lymphoma in 2009, while Paraguayan President Fernando Lugo spent a lot of time in Brazil in 2010, also to treat a lymphoma.

All these countries have strong presidential systems, and the absence of the person in charge creates a challenging power vacuum.

In Argentina's case, Fernandez de Kirchner's cancer diagnosis could have been a lot more complicated politically had it come just a few weeks earlier. Until she was inaugurated for her second term on December 10, Fernandez de Kirchner had as her vice president Julio Cobos, with whom she had a long-standing public spat after he voted against a key government-sponsored bill in 2008 in his capacity as Senate president.

Whenever he stood in during Fernandez de Kirchner's travels, Cobos conspicuously hosted opposition leaders in the presidential palace. He again voted against the president's wishes in the Senate in 2010.

Now, Fernandez de Kirchner can take three weeks to recover from surgery in the knowledge that her stand-in, new Vice President Amado Boudou, is someone she trusts.

Though less dramatically than in the Argentine case, with no key Senate votes to blame, Lugo has a difficult relationship with Vice President Federico Franco. During the cancer treatment, Franco several times suggested that perhaps Lugo should step down.

Chavez never formally took time off his presidential duties. While Vice President Elias Jaua took over the formalities of government in Caracas, Chavez claimed that he governed throughout his cancer treatment, even when he was in Havana for medical reasons. He was constantly in touch with Jaua and his ministers, and he regularly gave instructions from afar, Chavez said.

The opposition showed their concern for governability and repeatedly requested that the president formally take leave, but Chavez said there was no need.

It is evident that the president's health has political implications.

The South American leaders appear to be doing well. Rousseff and Lugo are officially cured from their illnesses. Chavez says he has recovered, too, while Lula's doctors say that he is making 'extraordinary' progress.

Fernandez de Kirchner's real fight against the disease starts with surgery Wednesday, though doctors have said that her thyroid cancer has a 90-per-cent survival rate, and that it was detected early enough to be very optimistic.