Cari­com’s chair­man, Grena­da’s Prime Min­is­ter Dick­on Mitchell, says mem­ber states are not di­vid­ed on the re­cent pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in Venezuela. 

Crit­i­cisms have been mount­ing against in­cum­bent Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro, af­ter elec­toral au­thor­i­ties de­clared him the win­ner on Mon­day. There have been al­le­ga­tions that the elec­tion process was rigged, lead­ing to heat­ed protests. Eleven peo­ple were killed and hun­dreds de­tained by po­lice.

Re­spond­ing to ques­tions dur­ing the clos­ing cer­e­mo­ny of the 47th Cari­com heads of gov­ern­ment meet­ing yes­ter­day, Mitchell said he was pleased that the elec­tion took place.

“Cari­com does not have to have a po­si­tion on the mat­ter. Elec­tions in Venezuela are do­mes­tic mat­ters. Sec­ond Venezuela is not a mem­ber of Cari­com and third, we ex­pect and it has al­ready hap­pened that mem­bers will in­di­cate their po­si­tions. Cari­com not­ed the fact that the elec­tions had tak­en place, we’re hap­py the peo­ple had op­por­tu­ni­ty to ex­er­cise their de­mo­c­ra­t­ic right to en­gage in elec­tions and there is no di­vi­sion with­in Cari­com on the is­sue.”

But yes­ter­day, Guyana’s gov­ern­ment is­sued a state­ment say­ing it sup­port­ed calls for a trans­par­ent ver­i­fi­ca­tion of Venezuela’s elec­tion re­sults.

“Elec­tions are about peo­ple ex­er­cis­ing their con­sti­tu­tion­al right to elect a gov­ern­ment of their choice in a free, fair and trans­par­ent process. It be­hoves all to en­sure the in­tegri­ty of that process through the high­est stan­dards of ac­count­abil­i­ty, trans­paren­cy, and strict ad­her­ence to the rule of law, in­clud­ing the rules gov­ern­ing elec­tions, to guar­an­tee re­spect for the will of the peo­ple.”

“The peo­ple of Venezuela de­serve noth­ing less.”

Guyana’s Pres­i­dent Dr Ir­faan Ali said the state­ment was not an in­di­ca­tion that the process was not fair.

“We are not com­ment­ing on whether the process is fair... Our state­ment is fac­tu­al in na­ture, that is every mech­a­nism that is pro­vid­ed for in an elec­toral process must be ad­here to and if there are calls and there are calls from the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty and op­po­si­tion for one as­pect of that process to be ac­ti­vat­ed, we sup­port that call be­cause it is part of the elec­toral sys­tem,” he ex­plained.  

Aside from the is­sue of Venezuela, Mitchell con­firmed that a fol­low-up re­gion­al crime sym­po­sium, which was host­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go last year, will take place in Bar­ba­dos lat­er this year. Mitchell in­di­cat­ed that the is­sue of drug and gun traf­fick­ing re­mained a crit­i­cal one for Cari­com.