Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino on Thursday described it as “depressing” that member countries of the Organization of American States (OAS) failed to reach the consensus needed to approve a resolution calling on Venezuelan authorities to “immediately” publish the minutes of last Sunday’s elections with “absurd and stupid” arguments.
“What happened yesterday at the OAS is more than sad; it is depressing. I was never moved by that because they repeated the same pattern in Panama (during the dictatorship). The OAS works with clear definitions in some countries, opportunism and cowardice in others,” said Mulino in his press conference in which he harshly attacked that decision by the inter-American organization.
“What happened in Venezuela is simply and unacceptable. But even more unacceptable is the contempt of a sector of the international community that turned its back on the situation with absurd and stupid arguments and without any coherent system of support for the norms of international law,” he stressed.
After applauding Panama’s vote in favor of that resolution, the Panamanian president hoped that “hopefully the issue (of Venezuela) will not be exhausted in that sadly celebrated meeting in Washington that has blackened the annals of that failed Latin American entity. It has blackened it even more than it already was.”
He added that “now, the only thing left for countries to do is, individually, to continue expressing our rejection and to cooperate collectively in any multilateral action that tends to restore democracy in Venezuela as soon as possible.”
On Wednesday, the OAS discussed the approval of a resolution that called on Venezuelan authorities to publish “immediately” the minutes of last Sunday’s elections, since the National Electoral Center (CNE) of Venezuela has not shown the tally sheets, something that has been demanded by both the opposition and the citizens in massive protests and by part of the international community.
The CNE declared President Nicolás Maduro the winner of last Sunday’s elections with 51% of the votes compared to 44% obtained by the main opposition candidate, Edmundo González Urrutia, which has been widely questioned by the international community.
However, the anti-Chavez camp has other figures, published on a website, according to them, after scrutinizing 81% of the votes, which give González Urrutia the victory by a wide margin.
Argentina, Canada, Chile, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, the United States, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, the Dominican Republic, Suriname and Uruguay voted in favor of Wednesday’s resolution.
Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Grenada, Honduras, Saint Kitts and Nevis, and Saint Lucia abstained.
Dominica, Mexico, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and Trinidad and Tobago did not participate in the session, as did Venezuela, which has been absent from the organization for some time.
However, the absence of Mexico and several Caribbean countries from the session, coupled with the abstention of those 11 countries – especially Brazil, Colombia and Bolivia – meant that the necessary votes were not obtained to approve the document in an extraordinary session of the Permanent Council.
According to some ambassadors during the session, tensions were generated by a phrase in the resolution that called for a “comprehensive verification” of the results “in the presence of independent observation organizations to ensure the transparency, credibility and legitimacy of the results.”
The Panamanian government, headed by Mulino, has been a staunch critic of the Venezuelan elections, demanding transparency even before they were held. After the results, they not only declared them “fraudulent,” but also put relations on “suspense” and withdrew the diplomatic corps from the South American country. Currently, the airspace between the two countries is closed.
Panama City / EFE
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2024-08-03 06:22:06
