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Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at a military rally in Caracas on Jan. 30, 2019. (Photo: Marceloa Garcia/AFP - Getty Images)
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro at a military rally in Caracas on Jan. 30, 2019. (Photo: Marceloa Garcia/AFP – Getty Images)

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The Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines on Tuesday justified to lawmakers its decision to vote against the Jan. 10 Organisation of American States (OAS) resolution regarding the on-going political unrest in Venezuela.

On the inauguration of Nicolas Maduro as President of Venezuela for a second term on Jan. 10, the hemispheric block, by a vote of 19 for, six against and eight abstentions, adopted a resolution that recognised “the worsening political, economic, social and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela”.

The resolution also rejected Maduro’s new term in office and called for new presidential elections with all necessary guarantees of a free, fair and legitimate process.

At Tuesday’s meeting of parliament in Kingstown, Opposition Leader Godwin Friday asked Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louis Straker, to tell the national assembly why the Unity Labour Party administration voted against the resolution.

“Mr. Speaker, why did St. Vincent and the Grenadines vote against the resolution? Because it was the right thing to do,” Sir Louis said.

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“It was the principled thing to do. You would observe, Mr. Speaker, that of the 19 votes for the resolution, only five of 14 CARICOM members voted for the resolution. And there were eight CARICOM members who did vote for the resolution. We are upholding international law.”

Where fo countries stand

Sir Louis said Chapter 1, Article 2 of the Charter of the United Nations says the organisation is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all its members.

He further noted that Paragraph 4 of Article 4 of the UN Charter says, “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.”

Turning to the Charter of the Organisation of American States Sir Louis quoted:

Louis Straker
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louis Straker. (iWN file photo)

“The American States establish by this Charter the international organization that they have developed to achieve an order of peace and justice, to promote their solidarity, to strengthen their collaboration, and to defend their sovereignty, their territorial integrity, and their independence. Within the United Nations, the Organization of American States is a regional agency…

“The Organization of American States has no powers other than those expressly conferred upon it by this Charter, none of those provisions authorizes it to intervene in matters that are within the internal jurisdiction of the Member States.”

The minister of foreign affairs said that the simple answer to the opposition leader’s question would be “that on May 21, 2018, Nicola Maduro won president elections in Venezuela from among a field of five candidates in a vote declared free and fair by hundreds of regional and international observers, inclusive of a team from the Caribbean.

“Consequently, St. Vincent and the Grenadines recognises the legitimacy of the Venezuela government and, therefore, cannot support a resolution in the OAS, which seeks to undermine that legitimacy.”

Sir Louis, however, said it would be remiss of him not to seize the opportunity and broaden the response and to examine the antecedents of the resolution and the reason why the principled stance of SVG, relative to the Venezuela issue.”

The foreign minister went on to recount the timelines of developments in Venezuela and the reaction of the opposition there, the international community as well as Kingstown’s response.

5 replies on “Voting against OAS Venezuela resolution ‘was the right thing to do’ — Sir Louis”

  1. We in little SVG are not getting the real story about Venezuela from our government and its Marxist sychophants like Jomo Thomas and Renwick Rose.

    The last national election in Venezuela was the furthest thing from free and fair when oppostion politicans wefre imprisoned or exiled which lead to a widespread public boycott of the election, voter suppression, vote rigging, and ballot stuffing.

    Meanwhile, all of the supporters of the discredited and reviled Maduro regime conveniently fail to recognize that international bodies like the United Nations support the notion of the external “right to protect” citizens from the wicked actions of their own governments, using using armed intervention to do so as a last resort if necessary (see, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsibility_to_protect#cite_note-89).

    According to Sir Louis, no sovereign nation has a right or responsiblity to interfere in the internal affairs of another sovereign nation regardless of what the government of that nation is doing to its people, including ethnic cleansing, genocide, and other crimes against humanity.

    What a wicked moral position to hold. But, in our case, this has nothing to do with morality: We are only supporting the Venezualan regime in its war against its own people because they sold us cheap oil and provided help building Argyle airport. What a craven and greedy people we have become!

    For a true picture of what is going on in Venezuala, please read the following: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/kelly-mcparland-canadas-ndp-sides-venezuelas-oppressor?video_autoplay=true.

  2. This country’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louis Straker will always find words to justify and support the repressive regime of Nicolas Maduro’s Venezuela simply because the SVG family run regime is tied at the hip with the criminal thugs that are in charge there.

    This is how one reporter describes life there, it is as being “Inside the hell of ‘communist heaven’: Corpses dug up for jewellery, children jailed and a gangster regime that has looted billions. Read this searing dispatch from a Venezuela on the brink of revolution”
    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6659555/Inside-hell-communist-heaven-ROBERT-HARDMAN-collapse-Venezuela.html

    Following is a description of an individual’s life in this repressive state of Venezuela, being earnestly supported by our spineless and equally immoral family run administration of St Vincent and the Grenadines. Quote:

    [Jose Moncon was on the way home from his school for the mentally disabled, clutching nothing more threatening than his colouring book, when a demonstration blocked the road ahead and forced him to take a detour.
    Moments later, a police snatch squad coming the other way scooped him up and put him in prison for unspecified crimes against the state.

    He is severely epileptic and has the mental age of a ten-year-old. But because Jose is 21 and classed as an adult, he shares an airless cell with 18 other adult men, many of them hardened criminals. As Venezuela is jostling for top spot in the world homicide league, there are plenty of those around here.] Here in is a regime on its last repressive legs as it struggles to contain revolt.

    Hence in saying what he says, the St Vincent and the Grenadines Minister of Foreign Affairs, Louis Straker, is well aware that his own political future, as well as that of the Ralph Gonsalves family’s political existence, is now profoundly tied-up with that of the Nicolas Maduro’s family. Therefore both their unwavering support for Nicolas Maduro is a must.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6658917/Pence-calls-end-Maduro-government-Venezuela-Florida-rally.html

    As “Pence tells Venezuelan exiles it’s time to ‘end the Maduro dictatorship once and for all’ and warns that Trump will continue to weaken the regime” the regime for its part has embarked on a mad scramble to sell of billions of dollars’ worth of Gold to both the U.A.E and to Turkey.

    1. The danger is that assets such as gold end up in the hands of the Regime leaders in those places the U.A.E., Turkey and SVG.

      SVG is the destination hub and terminal for their eventual bolt hole in U.A.E.

  3. We do not have the Pillory or the Stocks any more therefore Straker and Co do make wretched fools of us all, especially those of us who do not put on a red shirt when required so to do.

    However, we do have the Belle Isle Correctional Facility, where we hope that a proper democratic administration in SVG, will house all those like him, who while mimicking the policies of the old soviets, Cuba and Venezuela, have caused us so much unimaginable grief and pain through their outright mismanagement and deceit, over the last eighteen years, with their now futile and failed experiment.

    We wait for that day as do the Venezuelans for their day of reckoning. Their doomsday!

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