TIME FOR CARICOM CORRECTIVE ACTION AT THE OAS !
PRESS RELEASE
Tomorrow -- Thursday the 18th of May 2017 -- the CARICOM Ministers of Foreign Affairs will all be gathering in Barbados for a special meeting to discuss primarily the situation in Venezuela and the campaign that has emerged in the Organization of American States (OAS) to intervene in the domestic affairs of Venezuela by attacking President Nicolas Maduro and his United Socialist Party (PSUV) administration.
Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves of St. Vincent and the Grenadines has already publicly expressed his concern about the manner in which a small group of powerful OAS member states are using that organization and its compliant Secretary General, one Luis Almagro, to target and subvert President Maduro.
(Luis Almagro is a former Foreign Affairs minister of Uruguay, and seemingly possesses a deep seated hatred of Maduro and the PSUV. Indeed, it has been reported that 21 % of Almagro's postings on Twitter are linked to the campaign against President Maduro. Furthermore, in an unprecedented move for the Secretary General of a multi-lateral organization of Governments, Almagro has met with representatives of the Venezuelan Opposition 26 times. Contrary to normal diplomatic protocol Almagro has made numerous statements against the Government of Venezuela,including comments made while he was visiting other countries).
Prime Minister Gonsalves has also expressed disquiet about the manner in which CARICOM governments have been permitting Luis Almagro and the said small group of powerful nations to break their unity within the OAS and use them to advance their anti-Venezuela agenda.
Indeed, we Barbadians should be extremely concerned about the role that our country and our OAS Ambassador-- Selwin Hart -- have been playing at the OAS!
Mr. Hart committed a major diplomatic blunder when, on the 3rd of April 2017, he joined together with 16 other Ambassadors to the OAS to stage an outrageously unconstitutional and illegal meeting at OAS headquarters in Washington D.C : an illegal and unconstitutional meeting that was designed by a triumvirate of powerful nations - the USA, Canada and Mexico - to target, stigmatize and attack the legitimate Government of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela.
Indeed, so outrageous were the actions of Mr. Hart and the other 16 rebel Ambassadors in staging the unconstitutional meeting in defiance of the Chairman of the Permanent Council of the OAS ( the Ambassador of Bolivia) and the Vice Chair of the Council ( the Ambassador of Haiti) and in passing an "illegal" anti-Venezuela Resolution, that the actions of Hart and his cohorts are being described by OAS officials and by veteran statesmen like Sir Ronald Sanders as "a coup d'etat following by a lynching" !
The people of Barbados should be made aware that when Hart and the 16 other rebel Ambassadors were holding their unconstitutional "rebel' meeting on the afternoon of Monday 3rd April, the Chairman of the Permanent Council of the OAS - the Ambassador of Bolivia - stormed into the meeting and informed them that they had no authority to stage such a meeting and that the meeting constituted a "coup d'etat".
In spite of this, Hart and his fellow rebel Ambassadors - no doubt emboldened by the fact that they were being led by the mighty USA - persisted with their illegal meeting and went on to propose and pass a Resolution that -in effect - indicted the democratic-socialist Administration of President Nicolas Maduro and set the stage for an OAS intervention in the internal affairs of Venezuela.
The end result of the outrageous folly of Hart and his fellow rebel Ambassadors is that Venezuela has felt constrained to withdraw from membership of the OAS!
So, as a result of the actions of Ambassador Selwin Hart and our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, our nation of Barbados has played an unprincipled role in causing Venezuela-- a nation that we respect and have friendly and fraternal relations with - to be hounded out of an important regional multi-lateral organization.
As a citizen of Barbados, I consider this to be one of the lowest and most shameful episodes in our entire history of diplomacy as an independent nation. Surely, the Right Excellent Errol Walton Barrow - author of the motto "friends of all, satellites of none"- must be turning in anguish in his watery grave!
On behalf of the Officers and members of the Clement Payne Movement of Barbados I herby urge Senator Maxine Mc Clean and all of the other CARICOM Ministers of Foreign Affairs who will be in Barbados tomorrow to remember that the nations that they have the honour to represent possess a proud tradition of "speaking truth to power" and of taking courageous and principled collective CARICOM positions in the international arena.
The Nicolas Maduro Administration was elected by the people of Venezuela in 2013 for a 5 year term that comes to an end in the year 2018. No CARICOM country should therefore find itself in an unholy campaign to aid and abet those forces that are so anxious to once again get their hands on Venezuela's tremendous oil resources that they are intent on unconstitutionally bringing down the Maduro Administration. To do so would be to do a severe injustice to our reputation as nations of substance, and to create an extremely negative precedent that will come back to haunt us and all other small nations in the years to come.
DAVID COMISSIONG
PRESIDENT
CLEMENT PAYNE MOVEMENT
