Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will seek another six-year term in an election next year despite recent surgery to remove a cancerous tumor, he told a state newspaper in an interview published late on Sunday.
News that the 56-year-old socialist leader underwent an operation last month in Havana to remove a baseball-sized tumor has called into question his long-term health and his fitness to continue governing the OPEC nation of 29 million people.
“I have medical reasons, scientific reasons, human reasons, reasons of love, and political reasons to keep myself at the front of the government and the candidacy with more force than before,” Chavez told the Correo del Orinoco newspaper.
“On a personal level, I tell you I have never thought for even an instant of retiring from the presidency.”
Chavez returned to South America’s biggest oil exporter on Saturday a week after leaving for chemotherapy in Cuba, saying no malignant cells had been found and that he was arriving home in better health than when he left.
“They checked organ by organ, taking tests to see if there had been metastasis, and they didn’t find anything. The tumor was encapsulated,” he told the newspaper, which splashed “Chavez to be candidate in 2012” across its front page.
In the interview, Chavez recounted how former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, his close friend and mentor, told him in the hospital that last week’s medical tests had discovered no malignant cells.
“He told me they found nothing. I have never heard such a short speech by Fidel,” Chavez joked, adding that Castro “had happiness in his face” when he saw him off at the airport.
Earlier on Sunday, Chavez attended a function celebrating the 228th anniversary of the birth of his inspiration, South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.
He spoke for almost an hour in a televised speech that was reminiscent of the time before his illness, when he often held forth for several hours a day.
“One has to have a good spirit,” he told the Correo del Orinoco. “This body, of nearly 57 years, is responding well.”
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