HAVANA, December 16 (RIA Novosti) – Cuban revolutionary leader Fidel Castro said “doctors are optimistic in their fight” to restore Hugo Chavez’s health, as the Venezuelan president recuperates at a clinic in Havana from a fourth operation to remove cancerous tissue, the Cuban media reported on Sunday.
“Hugo Chavez has inspired and earned the respect of the entire world. Everyone, even many of his opponents, wishes him a speedy recovery,” Castro said in a letter to Venezuelan Vice President and Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro, Chavez’s chosen successor.
The letter comes on the eighth anniversary of the formation of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas, which Castro and Chavez co-founded as an alternative to the US-proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas.
Chavez underwent a fourth operation to remove malignant cancer cells on Tuesday. He is scheduled to be inaugurated to a new six-year presidential term on January 10, 2013.
Meanwhile, voters in Venezuela go to the polls on Sunday to elect governors and state lawmakers in a test of the durability of the political movement created by Chavez, who was unable to actively campaign for the first time in 14 years.
