By Jeremy Morgan
Latin American Herald Tribune staff

CARACAS – President Mauricio Funes was duly sworn in Monday in El Salvador but there was a notable no-show at the ceremony. President Hugo Chávez abruptly did not turn up, and while officials had let this be known beforehand, they didn’t offer an explanation.

There was a hardly surprising bout of speculation as to the reasons behind the presidential absenteeism. It was Monday, people were back to work, and there wasn’t a whole lot else to chat about.

First off, it was noted that Bolivian President Evo Morales had suspended his plans to attend Funes’ inauguration. Officially, Morales pulled out for “reasons of work”.

But, apparently, he’d been counting on the Venezuelan security services and getting a lift in Chávez’ aircraft. Chávez had unveiled this part of the travel plan on Friday.

Inevitably, mean minds had it that Chávez and Morales were out to show their disapproval of Funes for some reason or other. But that seemed unlikely given that if anything, Funes looks like something of a soulmate for them both. Funes ran for president with the support of the old guerrillas at the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. Ergo, he’s a sort-of leftie, too.

In the end, Chávez was represented by Foreign Miniter Nicalás Maduro.

The gossip mill went into feverish overdrive when, for the second day running, Chávez cancelled the regular Sunday regular version of his program, Aló Presidente. Saturday’s edition, which was to have been the third in a succession of transmissions four days running, had also gone west.

That was after Chávez and Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa failed to come to terms on meeting on television to debate the issues of the day. What had promised to be the best bout since wrestling was taken off commercial television in Britain was over before it even began, but to whom this was down to was a matter of conjecture.

As to why Chávez pulled the plug on Sunday, that remained just as much of a mystery.

It was the Communications and Information Ministry which revealed there wasn’t going to be a program, citing “technical reasons” as the rationale for this.

However, it wasn’t that the president had suddenly gotten all shy and wanted to be entirely out of the public eye, a la Greta Garbo. For those with serious cold turkey withdrawal problems, there was always his Sunday column, The Lines of Chavez.

In this, he was off all over again about the dangers posed by the “lies of the capitalist media” – and the need for the public to be vigilant to the out-of-control “perversity” of those who were determined to “break all possible balance between legality and justice.”

A campaign had been launched, for instance, “by all the media” to make it widely believed that “the Bolivarian Revolution will go up against private property and the belongings of the Venezuelans.” But it was those very media people who were hoarding lots of cars with the intention of “openly speculating with selling and renting property.”

Opposition Metropolitan Mayor Antonio Ledesma, whose request for a referendum of the Capital District Law has predictably been turned down by the pro-government majority on the board at the National Electoral Council, leapt into the fall-out from the fracas with leading Latin literary light Vargas Llosa.

Ledezma, who probably has a great deal less to do these days now that the new law has been used to take so many of his assets, funding and functions away from him, challenged Chávez to a live debate.

“Let’s lower the flags that symbolize hate and violence and raise the flag of peace,” Ledezma declared, putting forward a plethora of issues he’d like to discuss – security, disarmament, cleaning up and equipping the police, among them.

Likelihood is that these items wouldn’t be near the top of Chávez’ list of things to talk about, given the government’s persistent inability to get on top of crime. Then Ledezma threw health and employment into his equation, apparently for good measure, but they’re not exactly the government’s strong points, either.

But even then, Ledezma wasn’t quite finished. After meeting with a group of former ambassadors, he called on the government to declare its position on Venezuela’s continued membership in the Organization of American States. Chávez has decried the OAS as a stooge of Washington and openly spoken of withdrawing Venezuela from the organization.