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“[…] We note that the European Union has been totally silent with respect to the voter suppression in the US and the attempts, which have failed so far, by Donald Trump, Michael Pence, Mike Pompeo and other top Republicans to carry out a veritable coup d’etat in the US by seeking to have the election results overturned by any means possible—including having State legislatures vote in the Electoral College contrary to the popular vote in the State.
“This brazen attack on the democratic process has not resulted in even a whimper from the EU, but they have condemned the Venezuelan elections as being undemocratic…”
The following press statement on Sunday’s election in Venezuela and the supposed hypocrisy of external parties to it, was submitted to Wired868 by Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) political leader, David Abdulah:
(Copyright Reuters)
The Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) calls for the respect of the democratic electoral process that will take place on Sunday 6 December, when millions of Venezuelans go to the polls to elect 277 Members of the National Assembly of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela for the period 2021-2026.
We state this because there have already been external voices raised against these elections, with false claims that the process will not be free and fair. In particular, the United States, the OAS secretary general Luis Almagro and the European Union have condemned the elections even before a single vote has been cast. The MSJ is very clear as to the real objectives behind these positions.
Firstly, it is hypocritical of the US, the EU and Almagro to speak of the lack of democracy in Venezuela when that nation has held more elections in the past twenty years than any other country in the hemisphere.
There have been Presidential elections, elections for the National Assembly, Gubernatorial elections, Municipal elections and even a recall vote.
The Founder of the Carter Center, former US President Jimmy Carter stated: “Of the 92 elections that we’ve monitored, I would say that the election process in Venezuela is the best in the world.”
Nothing has changed in the process since that statement to cause persons today to claim that the electoral process is flawed. Indeed, representatives of the MSJ have observed elections in Venezuela such as the Gubernatorial elections in October 2017 and we saw a process that is rigorous, ‘free and fair and free from fear’.
We are confident that Sunday’s elections will be no different. Had there not been the border closure due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the MSJ would have been able to accept the invitation sent by the president of the National Electoral Council of Venezuela to observe the elections and provide you with a first hand, eye witness report of the process.
Secondly, the United States administration has lost whatever moral authority it may have had to lecture other countries about electoral democracy. The US has long had a history of voter suppression and 40 years after we in the West Indies had full adult franchise, African-Americans and Native Americans were being denied to right to vote in the US South.
Voter suppression is still alive and well in the US today. Furthermore, as the entire world is seeing, no less a person than the sitting US president refuses to accept electoral defeat and is crying ‘stolen elections, fraud and rigging’ when no evidence of such exists.
No doubt his playbook is the one that will be used by the Opposition in Venezuela if they lose Sunday’s elections.
(via Salon)
We note that the European Union has been totally silent with respect to the voter suppression in the US and the attempts, which have failed so far, by Donald Trump, Michael Pence, Mike Pompeo and other top Republicans to carry out a veritable coup d’etat in the US by seeking to have the election results overturned by any means possible—including having State legislatures vote in the Electoral College contrary to the popular vote in the State.
This brazen attack on the democratic process has not resulted in even a whimper from the EU, but they have condemned the Venezuelan elections as being undemocratic. The MSJ condemns the total hypocrisy of the EU.
As for Luis Almagro, secretary general of the OAS, he has been exposed as having a single agenda: regime change of progressive governments in Latin America. In the process he has thoroughly discredited the OAS.
The position that the OAS took, through Almagro’s manipulations, in the 2019 elections in Bolivia that denounced as ‘rigged, undemocratic and fraudulent’ the victory of then president Evo Morales, led to a coup d’etat; Morales and other leaders having to go into involuntary exile; and the subsequent massacre of supporters of Morales’ party, the MAS—many of them being indigenous people and labour leaders.
This attack on the human rights of Bolivians was condemned in the OAS, as a result of a Resolution brought by most Caricom states. It was voted against by the US and the countries that comprise the Lima Group. The OAS report which was used to give legitimacy to the coup has since been shown to be itself a concoction of falsehoods.
The MSJ believes that the end game for the US, the EU and Almagro and his cohorts in the OAS is to condemn Sunday’s elections as being ‘fraudulent, rigged and undemocratic’—thus setting the stage for a Bolivia type intervention.
The MSJ is confident that the people of Venezuela will not accept such blatant interference in their internal affairs. The MSJ re-iterates our principled position that the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela is a sovereign state; that Nicolás Maduro is the democratically elected president of that nation and that there must be no external interference in the internal affairs of Venezuela.
We repeat our support for Caricom’s official positions that the Caribbean must be a ‘Zone of Peace’ and that the internal conflicts in Venezuela can only be resolved through dialogue, such as that advocated by the Montevideo Mechanism and the Norway initiative.
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Good. Stick to telling foreign countries,foreign governments.and foreign organisations what to do.
You may also go ahead and declare once more for all the world to hear that Maduro is not a dictator. Say that Almagro is crooked, corrupt, criminal, what have you.
Feel free too to take principled positions (even if you so style them yourselves) on matters of local government and politics. But do not put God out of your thoughts and DEMAND that the duly elected government do your bidding.
Know allyuh place!