Venezuelan leader says Hugo Chávez blessed him through a bird

In what is perhaps a modern, socialist, equivalent of an apotheosis, Venezuela's President and presidential candidate Nicolás Maduro has not shirked from linking his deceased predecessor to celestial affairs, first comparing his followers' grief for the death of Hugo Chávez to that of the Apostles for Christ, and now saying Chávez blessed him through "a tiny little bird" hovering over him on 1 or 2 April. This followed from a short cartoon he had placed on the Internet showing Chávez, who died of cancer in March, flying to Heaven as a bird, CNN reported on 2 April. Maduro made the comments on 2 April while addressing a crowd in the western district of Barinas at the start of the campaign for the 14 April elections. He said "a little bird" flew into a chapel where he was praying alone in the nearby district of Sabanetas, and flew three times above him, which he interpreted as a blessing from Chávez ahead of the polls, El Nacional reported. It seems however that credulity is not what it used to be, as the opposition candidate Henrique Capriles has accused him of lying several times in recent months. There were no immediate reports of his reacting to the claims although Capriles vowed on the website Twitter to shortly inform voters of an unspecified but "very grave" matter relating to the elections, Globovisión reported on 3 April. The candidates began moving around Venezuela as the short campaign period began; Capriles was in the eastern district of Maturín in Monagas on 2 April, although reported earlier as starting his campaign in Barinas where the presidential party was gathered. In Maturín he criticized again the regime's largesse with Venezuelan petrodollars, telling a crowd "you know how oil resources are given away...used to present ambulances and police patrol cars to other countries, and give them light bulbs. Is that because nothing is needed any more in any neighborhood of Monagas? I think a lot is missing," Globovisión reported on 2 April. Separately on 3 April, the conservative president of Paraguay - which cut ties with Venezuela in 2012 - said he considered Chávez's death "a miracle" for the harm he had done to Paraguay. Venezuela was one of several American countries to isolate Paraguay after parliament sacked its Leftist president, Fernando Lugo; Paraguay was notably excluded from regional trading blocks. Federico Franco Gómez told a business gathering at the Ritz hotel in Madrid that "for me it is a miracle Mr Chávez should have disappeared from the face of the earth...yes, because he greatly harmed my country...Paraguay is not a territory for Bolivarian ideas," Europa Press reported. He accused Chávez of complicity in killings and kidnappings for having given asylum to a small militant group, the Paraguayan People's Army (El Ejército del Pueblo Paraguayo). Paraguay is to hold general elections in April 2013.