The Miami Herald | EDITORIAL  Venezuela’s invisible president
The public was not allowed to get so much as a glimpse of the
ailing 58-year-old leader to determine whether he is
incapacitated, though all signs point in that direction. Access
to the hospital’s ninth floor, where Mr. Chávez resides, is
tightly restricted and enforced by a phalanx of gun-toting
guards. He has not been seen or heard from since he came back,
aside from a few Twitter messages that hailed his arrival and
then went silent.  Despite all this enormous secrecy, the
evidence is that Mr. Chávez’s condition is much worse than his
underlings want the public to believe and that they are either
kidding themselves or the public — or both — in order to play
for time.   The increasingly insistent assurances from his
designated stand-ins, principally Vice President Nicolás Maduro,
that Mr. Chávez was in charge and issuing orders from his
hospital bed were rendered less than credible by news that his
medical condition was getting progressively w