Venezuelan takes helm at OAS, still opposed to election monitors

Venezuelan diplomat Bernardo Álvarez, who was expelled from the United States in 2010 when he was his country’s ambassador to Washington, made his first speech Monday as the new chairman of the permanent council of the Organization of American States, where he is his country’s new ambassador. His fellow diplomats largely avoided the current controversy surrounding his leadership – namely that he takes the gavel at a time when his government is rejecting OAS monitoring of Venezuela’s upcoming parliamentary elections. Only the ambassador of Mexico offered an indirect critique, picking at Álvarez’s own words about new democracies and saying that an integral part of democracy is “an election process that is credible, a process that is clean.” More…