US filmmaker Oliver Stone hailed Friday the achievements of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and forecast that his vice president would be elected if the controversial leader dies of cancer.
“I think he’s going to be mourned as a national figure, he changed Venezuela forever, you have no idea how bad it was before him,” Stone told CNN, about the possibility Chavez may not survive.
Before Chavez, “people were fed up. He represents hope and change, the things that (President Barack) Obama stood for in our country in 2008,” he said, adding: “I was very happy that he won the re-election” in October.
The Venezuelan people “want him, he’s popular, the people love him, the majority of the people, because the living standards have gone up and that’s what’s ignored in so much of the reporting on Venezuela.”
“I found him to be a magnanimous warm man, big man.”
Asked about what would happen if Chavez dies, Stone added: “I have full confidence in (Vice President Nicolas) Maduro and his government, and I think they will continue, they will do the right thing.
“And if there needs to be another election, I’m pretty confident that his party, the Maduro people, will win,” he said, adding: “There’s a vocal minority that is against him.”
It is not the first time Stone has spoken out in favor of Chavez, whom he interviewed for a 2009 documentary “South of the Border,” exploring the outspoken Venezuelan leader’s role in bottom-up change sweeping South America.
Stone told a Spanish newspaper in the same year that Spain’s King Juan Carlos should “shut up” and listen to Chavez.
At a summit in Chile in 2007, Juan Carlos sparked a diplomatic row when he turned to Chavez — who had been repeatedly interrupting a speech by Spain’s then premier Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero — and said: “Why don’t you shut up.”
Oliver Stone hails Chavez, touts VP as successor
