14ymedio via EFE, 20April 2018 — The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), Luis Almagro, lamented on Thursday what he called the “illegitimate transition” of Cuba’s “dictatorship” with now former Cuban president Raúl Castro replaced by his chosen successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel.
“Revolution is not defined as the triumph of dictatorship over freedom. The presidential succession that we have just witnessed is an attempt to perpetuate an autocratic, dynastic regime,” says Almagro in a written statement.
“It represents decades without democracy and the violation of human rights and fundamental freedoms.”
The fifty-eight-year-old Díaz-Canel was proclaimed president of the Council of State and Council of Ministers by Cuba’s National Assembly after being voted into office by 603 of its 604 deputies, an electoral margin of 99.83%.
Díaz-Canel replaces eighty-six-year-old Raúl Castro, who left office after two terms.
Almagro claims that Díaz-Canel was chosen by the National Assembly “without the free expression of the Cuban people,” noting that “when a people’s sovereignty is ignored, it deligitimizes of the authority of its rulers.”
“A regime that imprisons and silences opponents and dissidents, which has eliminated freedom of expression, which has carried out selective executions of political prisoners, is not a system which can be assimilated or whose political practices are acceptable in this hemisphere in 2018,” says Almagro.
“Our hemisphere,” he added, “must continue to demand democracy, freedom, human rights, accountability and that dictators be brought before Inter-American and international courts of justice.
Cuba was suspended from OAS in 1962 after the triumph Cuban revolution, led by Fidel Castro. Although the organization’s member states lifted that suspension in 2009, Cuba has so far declined to rejoin.
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