Chavez Daughter Asks Venezuela Opposition to Respect Family

Maria Gabriela Chavez, the daughter of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, asked the country’s opposition to respect her family’s pain and stop playing “dirty.”

“I see a need to raise my voice against those who are playing with the pain of my family, my people and, above all, the memory of my father the giant,” Maria Gabriela wrote in a letter read by Information Minister Ernesto Villegas yesterday on state television. Villegas read the letter while standing alongside Chavez’s coffin as he lies in state at a Caracas military academy.

Opposition leader Henrique Capriles Radonski said March 10 that acting President Nicolas Maduro and the government lied to Venezuelans about the health and timing of Chavez’s death. Capriles, who will run as the opposition candidate in an April 14 election, also said Maduro is using Chavez’s popularity to boost his electoral chances.

Maduro and other top officials have called on the opposition to respect the mourning for Chavez as both sides prepare for the snap election.

Capriles wrote on his Twitter account last night that his criticism was aimed at Maduro, not Chavez’s family.

“Nicolas, you’re the one who lied,” he wrote. “I never in all these years offended the president or his family. If anything I said was interpreted that way by his family, I apologize.”

Argenis Chavez, the late president’s brother and head of the state power company Corporacion Electrica Nacional SA, said yesterday the government never lied to the country and called Capriles’ questioning of when Chavez died “immoral” and “barely human.”

“It’s disrespect to the president’s memory and the Chavez family’s dignity, as he insinuated that my mother and father, the president’s daughters and his brothers would lend ourselves to such an act,” Argenis said on state television.

To contact the reporter on this story: Jose Orozco in Caracas at jorozco8@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Andre Soliani at asoliani@bloomberg.net.