St. Kitts and Nevis Abstains as OAS votes to suspend Venezuela

By: T. Chapman

The Organization of American States has passed a resolution to call an Extraordinary Assembly to vote on suspending Venezuela from the 34-member group after President Nicolas Maduro’s widely condemned re-election last month.

The OAS’s General Assembly in Washington voted; 19 member states in favor, while four voted against. Eleven (11) abstained.

St. Kitts and Nevis was among the countries that abstained from the vote. Belize, Suriname, Haiti, Trinidad and Tobago, Grenada and St. Lucia were some of the other countries that abstained.

On May 20th, Maduro won a vote that the Venezuelan opposition, along with the United States and other Latin American nations, have decried as a sham cementing a dictatorship which has devastated a once-prosperous economy.

The OAS resolution also implored Venezuela to allow humanitarian aid into the country.

The vote which took place last night was one of the final acts on the agenda at the group’s General Assembly, held in Washington DC.

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