Russia Rejects OAS Interference in Cuban Constitutional Referendum

We consider that the celebration of a referendum in Cuba and the adoption of the magna carta are an inalienable sovereign right of that country and its people, declared the spokesperson of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maria Zajarova.

The use of any pressure on the Cuban government and its citizens is absolutely unacceptable, she warned.

Russia hopes that the danger of a precedent of interference will be properly assessed in the Latin American and Caribbean region.

Zajarova referred to the celebration last 12th at OAS headquarters of a conference of experts on the new draft Constitution of Cuba, where a national referendum will be held next Sunday.

Such an event, at first sight, wouldn’t deserve any comment, since we are talking about a more and almost routine meeting of experts with an anti-Cuban mentality, held at the headquarters of the organization, which in 1962 withdrew the Cuban government from its activities, she said.

In 2009, this OAS decision was reversed, but Havana ‘is not anxious to return to the OAS fold,’ she said.

However, at the conference, the OAS secretary general referred to a ‘dictatorship’ in Cuba and ‘the undemocratic character of the constitutional process,’ she said.

In addition, this discussion took place in parallel with the dramatic development of events in Venezuela, Zajarova added.

It is added to this that U.S. President Donald Trump expressed in Miami last Monday his desire to change the political system in Cuba, she said.

We see that in the Western Hemisphere a model of ‘color revolutions’ is being promoted, contrary to the norms of international law, enshrined in the UN Charter as respect for sovereignty and non-interference in internal affairs, she said.

In this particular case, apparently unreasonable, to please Washington’s ideologized attitudes, the OAS assumes the role of evaluator of legal and legislative activities that fall within the internal political competence of the Cuban state, he emphasized.

By doing so, they are trying to discredit in the eyes of the world community the Cubans themselves, who were directly involved in the drafting of the new Constitution, she said.

The discussion of the referendum in Cuba counted with the participation of more than eight million 940 thousand citizens who made more than one million interventions, while in the draft constitution 60 percent of its 229 articles were modified.