Holness: No decision yet on Venezuela’s leader, OAS leadership race
Published:Monday | March 2, 2020 | 12:00 AMEdmond Campbell/Senior Staff Reporter
Despite being lobbied by Washington to support Luis Almagro to retain the secretary general post at the Organization of American States (OAS), Prime Minister Andrew Holness said his administration has not yet decided who will get its vote at the March 20 election.
In a Gleaner interview last Tuesday, Holness said that the United States was not the only country that was seeking Jamaica’s support to elect one of three candidates vying for the OAS top job.
The incumbent Almagro will go up against Ambassador Hugo de Zela Martínez, permanent representative of Peru to the OAS, and María Fernanda Espinosa, former president of the United Nations General Assembly.
Espinosa was reportedly nominated by Antigua and Barbuda, St Vincent and the Grenadines, and a few other Caribbean nations.
“We are considering very carefully those countries that have lobbied us, and closer to the time we will make our views known,” Holness said.
The Nicholás Maduro administration in Venezuela pulled out of the OAS in April 2019, accusing the multilateral body of repeated acts against Venezuela’s sovereignty.
Maduro has, in the past, lashed the leadership of the OAS for carrying out the dictates of Washington.
The US and at least 50 other countries have thrown their support behind Opposition Leader Juan Guaidó as the head of government in Venezuela after he declared himself the acting president more than a year ago. Washington and scores of other countries have rejected Maduro’s 2018 re-election, calling it fraudulent. Since that time, the US has imposed crippling economic sanctions on the Maduro regime.
However, Maduro remains resolute that his re-election was legitimate, charging that Washington was seeking to oust him from the presidency.
When asked which of the disputed Venezuelan leaders Jamaica recognises as the country’s legitimate president, Holness did not take a definitive position on the issue.
UNFAIR ELECTION
According to the prime minister, Maduro had claimed victory from the last election in the South American country. However, he argued that the election was not conducted under “the principles of free and fair elections that we as Jamaicans espouse”.
At the same time, Holness said his administration had not come to a definitive position as to whether Guaidó could be considered the de facto president of Venezuela based on an analysis of the Venezuelan constitution.
“… We are open to further perspective on this, but our analysis of the constitution would not support that perspective. We are still looking at it, and we have experts and other persons who have greater skills in examining the constitution of Venezuela to advise us. When that process is complete, we may make other decisions,” Holness said.