The New York Times: Marcus Mabry- 'Hugo Chávez Dead: What's Next for Venezuela After President's Death?'

Source:The New York Times- a Venezuelan mourning the death of President Hugo Chavez.

"TimesCast: After President Hugo Chávez's death, The Times's William Neuman surveys the scene in Caracas and the president of the Inter-American Dialogue examines American relations going forward." 

From The New York Times

I don't like wishing the death and ill of anyone unless of course they deserve it they are cold blooded serial murderers or something. And I don't believe Hugo Chavez President of the Bolivar Republic of Venezuela fits into that category, but I can't resist the temptation to believe how President Chavez's death would benefit what is potentially a great developed nation. If the Venezuelan people are simply empowered to make that happen in this large, but not overpopulated country of roughly 25M people. 

Venezuela does not have to be a what could've been country like Cuba. Where the state takes over and attempts to run the lives of an entire country. Venezuela has the resources to take care of themselves if their government just allows them to do that and as much as Hugo Chavez calls himself a Socialist and speaks proudly about socialism, hut he governs more like a Fidel Castro Communist, that tries to not only centralize not only all of the power with the central government, but most if not all of the power in the Presidency itself and thats not a good future for anyone.

If the chips fall into place assuming that President Chavez dies and we are not there yet, Venezuela will be at a fork in the road and have a decision to make. But they'll have four choices and not two. (If that makes any sense) 

Does Venezuela continue down the road of Chavez authoritarianism in the name of socialism. 

Do they try to become the type of authoritarian state thats common in the Mideast where most of the power is centralized with the military and that's possible the military does have a lot of power in Venezuela. 

Do they attempt to make socialism more democratic in Venezuela where it's democratic and set up a social democratic republic in Venezuela. 

Or do they try to make democracy real and move in a more liberal direction where the power is with the people completely. Where Venezuelans are empowered to make the most out of life that they can make for themselves. With government setting up an economic system that empowers all Venezuelans to be able to take care of themselves.

I don't like putting things this way, but Hugo Chavez dying some point this year would give Venezuela especially the Venezuelan people the opportunity to take the country back from the statists there. And empower a country of 25M people to be able to live their own lives in freedom without worrying about big government interfering. And locking them up because they believe they represent some threat to the state or cause or something, but we'll see. 

If Hugo Chavez dies they'll probably have some short-term president and government that will probably be empowered to decide where Venezuela goes from there, do they try to make the interim administration permanent with no real legal opposition. Or do they let the people of Venezuela decide where their country goes. In which direction they move in with multi-party elections where the Socialist Party would have to compete with other parties to keep the power that they have in Caracas.