Why did the Venezuelan Foreign Affairs Ministers call her Costa Rican counterpart a political illiterate? The answer lies in the intervention made by Manuel González during the 47th General Assembly of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Cancun, Mexico.
González raised his voice before the lack of declaration from this organization before the situation experienced by Venezuela. The Minister did not bite his tongue to issue several accusations against the regime of Nicolás Maduro.
Costa Rica cannot remain silent before a regime that restricts the right to vote, a regime that holds political prisoners and prosecutes civilians in military courts. A regime that persecutes the opposition and disqualifies it from holding public office, that closes and blocks media signals. A regime that slams and violently suppresses the critical voices of journalists, students, representatives of civil society and human rights defenders and makes arbitrary arrests,”
said the Costa Rican Foreign Minister during his speech.
But he went further, accusing Maduro of suspending elections at will and despising international supervision, in addition to
spending its resources in weapons, granting firearms to civilians, deteriorating the economy with expropriations and restrictions to the private sector and violating –before our incredulous eyes- its own Constitution.”
Costa Rica supports the call made by the Vatican for a serious negotiation with clear conditions, work schedules, deadlines and guarantees for the transition.
It is a call that born of our firm conviction that the cost of inaction is too high and it’s measured in lost lives. The countries assembled here are part of a system and, because it is precisely a system, the formal breakdown of a democracy in one of the member countries cannot be overlooked, because the Venezuelan crisis is a crisis in the hemisphere. Do not forget that,”
said the minister.
In recent weeks, Costa Rica has been firm in calling for action against the political and social repression in Venezuela. However, so far there are no solutions.