President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said Wednesday that Mexico wouldn’t participate in an Organization of American States (OAS) meeting on Sunday’s allegedly fraudulent presidential election in Venezuela.
“I have information that Alicia Bárcena, the minister of foreign affairs, won’t participate in the OAS meeting [on Wednesday],” López Obrador told reporters at his morning press conference.
“We’re not going to participate because we don’t agree with the attitude of partiality of the OAS,” added AMLO, who has previously been critical of the Washington D.C.-based organization and favored the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States as a forum for regional dialogue during his presidency.
The office of OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro said in a statement on Tuesday that throughout the entire electoral process in Venezuela, “we saw the application by the Venezuelan regime of its repressive scheme complemented by actions aimed at completely distorting the electoral result, making that result available to the most aberrant manipulation.”
Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced on Monday that incumbent President Nicolás Maduro of the United Socialist Party of Venezuela had won a third six-year term in office, triggering protests across the poverty-stricken nation.
Before that announcement, López Obrador said that Mexico would respect the result determined by the CNE.
On Wednesday, he accused Almagro of having “recognized” one of the candidates — opposition aspirant Edmundo González — as the winner of the election “without any proof.”
“So why go to a meeting like that? This is not serious, it is not responsible, it doesn’t help to find a peaceful, democratic way out of … [this] conflict,” López Obrador said.
“… Enough of this! Enough of the interventionism. Venezuela’s problems have reached a stalemate, a way out hasn’t been found, because there is a lot of interference — they get involved from abroad, not just [foreign] governments, the media [as well],” he said.
Despite that remark, López Obrador voiced an opinion that has been expressed by other world leaders in recent days – that the Venezuela government should release the complete voting records of Sunday’s elections.
“I believe proof [of the election results] should be presented, the voting records,” he said.
So far, however, there is no evidence that electoral fraud was committed in Venezuela, López Obrador said before asserting that he had “a lot of proof” supporting his claim that his defeat in the 2006 presidential election in Mexico was the result of fraud.
In 2006, he added, “no foreign country, no foreign government asked for transparency.”
With reports from El Universal and Milenio
