The Secretary General of the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), Ernesto Samper, said that “Today more than ever, it makes sense to call on all Venezuelans to seek, through dialogue, to resolve the differences that today have them confronted, as understood within the initiative of UNASUR, the representatives of the Government and the opposition today, to convene the first plenary meeting of the dialogue for next October 30, 2016. ”
This was stated by Samper, through an official communiqué, published in http://www.unasursg.org/.
Read the communiqué below.
The decision of the National Electoral Council to suspend, following the legal decisions of several regional courts, the collection process of a 20% of manifestations of will for a possible activation of the recall referendum that was underway, has caused understandable frustration in many citizens who saw in it a constitutional solution to the political crisis. Other Venezuelans have expressed, facing this fact, their legitimate support to the Government and its project of change. The result of these differences cannot be, in any case, an increasing polarization and much less, the return of violence to the streets. On the contrary, today more than ever, it makes sense to call on all Venezuelans to seek, through dialogue, to resolve the differences that today have them confronted, as understood within the initiative of UNASUR, the Government representatives and the opposition today, to convene the first plenary meeting of the dialogue for next October 30, 2016.
I thank, on behalf of UNASUR, the task that have been doing in the difficult and complex search of this space former Presidents Leonel Fernandez, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero and Martin Torrijos and I welcome the Vatican Nuncio Emil Paul Tscherring, a special envoy of Pope Francis I, who joined from last weekend this team of good will, whose purpose is to sow peace in Venezuela. I also thank the support that has received this commitment by the Secretary General of the United Nations, the European Union, the Vatican, among others, and, of course, the Foreign Ministers of UNASUR that opened the doors to these efforts since February 2014 .
In the months that we have been working on building this scenario of conciliation, have been achieved significant results as the generation of spaces of trust among political actors and the selection of topics that could be part of the agenda of the Bureau and the Committee on truth and Justice proposed by the President of the Republic, the discussion, postponed in light of the latest developments on the constitutional functioning of powers, the need to agree on an electoral agenda and to immediately adopt important economic measures of a social relief. Also, the creation of a Commission of Guarantees that we have proposed to seek for institutional and permanent solutions to cases that may affect the free exercise of democratic debate.
Because we know that dialogue is the way to produce greater political benefits with lower social costs and in less time, we insist on it to overcome the problems afflicting Venezuela today. In UNASUR we are aware that political crises are not solved with less, but with more democracy, and that legality must always go by the hand of legitimacy.
I want to finish this statement by making an evocation of what is currently happening in Colombia, my country. After fifty years of an armed conflict and 280,000 fatalities we are taking a look at peace. The process of dialogue and negotiation in Havana has not been easy. It has demanded a huge dose of forgiveness and tolerance to the pain of the past and the desire for revenge in the future. Because I know the pacifist vocation of Venezuelans, I think that they, without giving up their claims of a change, can go through their own path of reconciliation. To do so, they will count on us.
Quito, October 24, 2016.
AHORA:
