By NAN Contributor
News Americas, WASHINGTON, D.C., Weds. May 18, 2018: The Secretary General of the Organization of American States, Luis Almagro, moments ago issued a harsh open letter to President of Venzuela Nicolas Maduro in response to the Venezuelan leader’s criticism of the OAS. Following is the entire letter from SG Almagro:
“Message from the OAS Secretary General to the President of Venezuela
President Nicolás Maduro,
I am not a CIA agent. And your lie, even if it is repeated a thousand times, will never be true. Nevertheless it should be clarified, although this is to deny the absurd. My conscience is clear, President, and my behavior more so. There is no threat that you can make that will even remotely affect either.
I am not a traitor. I am not a traitor to ideas, nor to principles, and this means that I am not a traitor to my people, those who feel themselves represented by the principles of freedom, honesty, decency, public integrity (yes, those who assume power as poor people and leave the same way), democracy and human rights. But you are, President. You betray your people and your supposed ideology with your rambling tirades, you are a traitor to ethics in politics with your lies and you betray the most sacred principle in politics, which is to subject yourself to the scrutiny of your people.
You should return the riches of those who have governed with you to your country, because they belong to the people, you should return justice to your people in all the senses of the word (including finding the true killers of the 43 and not the people you hold prisoner for their ideas, although they may not be yours nor mine). You should return the political prisoners to their families.
You should give the National Assembly back its legitimate power, because this comes from the people, you should return to the people the decision about their future. You will never be able to give back the lives of the children who have died in hospitals because they did not have medicine, you will never be able to free your people from so much suffering, so much intimidation, so much misery, so much distress and anxiety.
I hope that no one commits the folly of carrying out a coup d’état against you, but also that you yourself do not do so. It is your duty. You have an obligation to public decency to hold the recall referendum in 2016, because when politics are polarized the decision must go back to the people. That is what the Constitution says. To deny the people that vote, to deny them the possibility of deciding, would make you just another petty dictator, like so many this Hemisphere has had.
I know that the OAS and my work bothers you because, as the song goes, “entre los Ceibos estorba un Quebracho.” I am sorry to inform you that I neither bow down, nor am I intimidated. “
