By Vashtee Achibar Thursday, March 7 2013

Psychic Yesenia Gonzales is contending that Venezuela, her homeland, will be better off now that President Hugo Chavez has died.

The flamboyant and often controversial leader, who led Venezuela for 14 years, was pronounced dead at 4.25 pm on Tuesday at a military hospital in Caracas. Chavez had waged a two-year battle with cancer and had received treatment in Cuba.

On the death of the Venezuelan President, Gonzles said she was both “happy and sad”. “Happy we no longer have a dictator anymore, happy we are heading for change and hoping for prosperity, but very sad about what the people will go through,” she said.

Describing Chavez as a “hurricane” that swept through Venezuela, Gonzales, who has lived in Trinidad for 30 years, said she had predicted his death years ago.

“I predicted about six years ago that President Chavez was going to die and all the funeral and so on. I see all of that and that the country would suffer a bad time and everything is coming to pass,” she said.

“Right now when people say (ask) if I am sorry for Chavez, I say that was his karma and whatever he did in this life as a President he left Venezuela in a mess,”she said, referring to the state of the Venezuelan economy.

“Right now in Venezuela all the prices went up, the value of the bolivars (declined), (there is) no electricity right now, no medication right now. They hide Chavez sickness for a long time. Everything was a big secret, they spend money like crazy,” she said of his government.

Gonzales accused Chavez of corruption and of mismanaging the economy.

“When Chavez used to give people a house or food it was not his money it was oil money he was giving them, that was his responsibility. Chavez run the economy like a rum shop on the corner, giving away the oil money to Cuba and Bolivia, that’s why the presidents (Raul Castro and Evo Morales) are crying. They are wondering who will help them now. But we are hoping for change, for betterment,” she said.

Gonzales said her sympathies were with the people who were “not getting food and medication and the right education, who were denied free speech living under a dictator. I am happy we don’t have a dictator no more. I am happy that he is no longer our President. God took him away, the country could not take him but God has all the power,” she added.

She spoke of a tough time ahead for Venezuela’s vice-president Nicholas Maduro, saying he has a lot to deal with but admitted it was too early to give a definitive prediction on his future saying, “It’s too early to pick up the vibes.”