Cuba as a Member of the UN Human Rights Council Should Not be News

Cuba as a Member of the UN Human Rights Council Should Not be News /
Miriam Leiva
Posted on November 15, 2013

MADRID, Spain November www.cubanet.org That the Cuban government was
elected to the United Nations Human Rights Council has made headlines
these days. However, it should not be news, because the first 47 members
joined the organization established in March 2006 to supplant the
Commission, whose ineffectiveness needed to be addressed. Cuba remained
during the allowed two three-year terms, and waited for another
opportunity to rejoin the eight representatives from Latin America and
the Caribbean.

On this occasion, China and Russia also make up the 14 countries added,
with the corresponding international criticism for their flagrant human
rights violations. However, it is not strange event, considering member
countries like Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Nigeria. Ghadafi's Libya was
part of it until 2011, and Chancellor Treki chaired the 64 sessions of
the UN General Assembly in 2009. All UN member countries have the right
to be elected.

Venezuela is a member of the Council for the period 2013-2015, which
began earlier this year. On 14 November, President Maduro achieves
special powers through the Enabling Act approving the National Assembly,
saving the voting hurdle necessary. His party has 98 seats and the
opposition 67, but to govern at will he needs 99 votes. In an imitation
of the full power of Chavez, he revived the accusation of corruption
filed against the deputy Maria Mercedes Aranguren, defector from
Chavezism, with the intention of lifting parliamentary immunity, he
quickly published it in the Official Gazette and replaced her with
Carlos Flores, who would have no choice but to give the vote necessary
because, as discussed in Caracas, he would be compelled to resolve their
dispute with the power that had even expropriated part of his estate.

To the highly-gifted Maduro, Chavez in the form of a little bird
recently appeared in an image that was blur for the rest of us, but with
his skills as a copyist and the advice of his first lady counsel, he
launched an assault for absolute power. However, he lacks the charisma
of the caudillo-commander-President, or the unconditional support within
the Chavistas. More dangerous still is this man with his threatening
supernatural harangues, his disastrous and interventionist economic
measures against private property that deepen the shortages, the
economic crisis despite the flood of petrodollars, the estrangement of
private and foreign investment, and the inflation and massive corruption .

The game with the mechanisms of democracy of Fidel Castro and Hugo
Chavez did not turn out equally with an heir unsure of himself and
completely lacking in talent. But President Maduro will be on the Human
Rights Council as Ghadafi was, proof that the agency has not achieved
its main tasks and shows that truth can not be covered with votes of
friends and violators. In Geneva, they wrapped their representatives
with the islanders, while in Cuba went from being frustrated by the
mistakes of the heir to intensifying the search for promising economic
support, which urgently leads to Brazil.

15 November 2013

Source: "Cuba as a Member of the UN Human Rights Council Should Not be
News / Miriam Leiva | Translating Cuba" -
http://translatingcuba.com/cuba-as-a-member-of-the-un-human-rights-council-should-not-be-news-miriam-leiva/