Ailing Chavez has no plans for replacement candidate

The possibility of a replacement candidate for Venezuela's Hugo Chavez in the October 7 election is not being considered as the president recovers from surgery in Cuba, a government spokesman said Friday. Chavez, who is running for a third term as president, underwent surgery this week in Havana for what he called an "injury" in the same area around the pelvis where a tumor was extracted in June 2011. Chavez said earlier that the lesion was likely malignant, but the government has released no details on the disease. "A succession of the candidacy has not been proposed," said Venezuelan Information Minister Andres Izarra in an interview with the newspaper El Nacional. He was responding to questions about whether Chavez's health or treatment would interfere with his election campaign against opposition candidate Henrique Capriles Radonski. Izarra said he does not anticipate Chavez will turn over power temporarily to Vice President Elias Jaua because the president "is fully capable of continuing to exercise power." "The political and governmental agendas continue advancing hand in hand and under the guidelines and instructions of President Chavez during his recovery process," Izarra said. Last year during his cancer treatment in Cuba, Chavez also declined to delegate his presidential functions. The kind of cancer and its exact location on Chavez's body was never made public. The information minister complained that Chavez's opponents are trying "to create instability and waves of rumors about the president's illness." Chavez plans to be his own spokesman to address the concerns to avoid confusion, Izarra said.