Black eye for the region

If Venezuela succeeds in its bid to join the U.N. Security Council, as appears likely, it certainly won’t be the first (or last) time that an undeserving government gets the green light to join the world body’s enforcement arm. But that doesn’t make this bad decision go down any easier. It won’t speak well for either the council or the United Nations as a whole to have a nation with one of the world’s worst crime rates, where citizens live in a perpetual state of insecurity, on the Security Council. Indeed, it sounds like a bad joke, particularly when the government continues to repress the democratic opposition with brute force and may even be on the verge of bankruptcy. More…