“What we have in Venezuela is a dictatorship,” was the statement given by Peru’s Foreign Relations minister, Ricardo Luna, at the end of several hours of talks in Lima between government ministers from Latin America and the Caribbean.
President Kuczynski had called for regional unity following the fraudulent results in Venezuela of the election for a Constitutional Assembly, and the representatives of 17 nations convened in Lima today to discuss the threat to democracy and the increasing violence and loss of civil liberties under President Nicolas Maduro’s regime as it ramps up its harsh reaction to protests and the opposition.
The meeting at the colonial Foreign Relations Ministry in downtown Lima was attended by Canada’s assistant secretary for the Americas, as well as the Foreign Affairs ministers of Paraguay, Colombia, Brazil, Panama, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Saint Lucia, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Guyana, Honduras and Jamaica, and by Uruguay’s ambassador to Peru.
Among the 16 points in the Declaration of Lima, the ministers agreed that the establishment of the Constitutional Assembly in Venezuela is a definitive breaking point in the Venezuelan government’s long process to distort the country’s democratic institutions.
“We, the countries in the region, consider that the political acts that arise from the Constitutional Assembly are illegitimate,” Luna said.
The ministers agreed that each of the countries meeting in Lima are able to adopt the bilateral measures they see fit, as events develop in Venezuela.
A permanent group of foreign relations ministers has been set up to monitor the crisis, and is open to all countries that wish to participate and that share these points of view, Luna said, to seek Venezuela’s return to democracy. The group is scheduled to hold its first meeting in mid-September in New York, during the United Nations General Assembly.
“The future of Venezuela has to be resolved by the Venezuelans themselves, but our countries in the region have a role in helping to seek a solution, however difficult it might be,” said Chile’s Foreign Relations minister, Heraldo Muñoz.
