Venezuela Rejects New US Sanctions as Pence Demands Suspension of Elections

A communique from Venezuela’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs restated the country’s 2017 decision to leave the OAS.

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Caracas, May 8, 2018 (venezuelanalysis.com) – A new round of US sanctions against Venezuela, this time directed against three individuals and their businesses, was rebuffed this Monday by Samuel Moncada, the Bolivarian Republic’s Vice Minister for Foreign Relations.

Responding to US Vice President Mike Pence’s announcement regarding the measures and his call for other nations in the region to isolate Venezuela, Moncada said, “We don’t accept the United States as court of justice nor as any kind of authority. We are a free country.”

These newest sanctions were announced by Pence during a Monday speech before the Organization of American States, in which he called Venezuela’s upcoming May 20 elections a “sham” and reiterated US demands for the vote to be canceled.

The latest in a long series of US sanctions directed against Venezuela, including harsh financial sanctions barring dealings in PDVSA and Venezuelan sovereign debt, Monday’s measures target three low profile figures who, according to the US government, engage in drug trafficking. The sanctions freeze the assets of these individuals, who have no demonstrated connections to the Bolivarian government, and their 20 companies which are spread between Panama and Venezuela.

In response to Pence’s call to suspend the upcoming elections, Moncada replied “There is zero possibility that the elections will be called off.” He added that the current US government was “the most racist and intolerant one in recent decades,” and that “it has been threatening the whole region.”

At the OAS meeting in Washington, Pence urged countries from the region to impose financial and travel restrictions on the country’s leaders, affirming that “it is time to do more, much more” in relation to Venezuela.

Among the additional steps the Trump administration is reportedly considering are further sanctions targeting the South American country’s oil industry, including a possible oil embargo.

Following the meeting, Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry issued a communique Tuesday confirming its plans to withdraw from the organization that it considers to be “a colonial body at the service of Washington.”

Venezuela’s opposition parties have not commented directly on the latest sanctions, but a number of leading anti-government politicians have endorsed Washington’s hardline stance vis-a-vis Caracas.

For his part, opposition presidential frontrunner Henri Falcon spoke approvingly of Pence’s remarks, calling Venezuela a “disturbance” to the region.

“Venezuela has become a factor of disturbance for the countries of the region,” he said in an interview with Union Radio on Tuesday.

Falcon was himself reportedly threatened with US sanctions after he defied a boycott of the May 20 elections by Venezuela’s main right-wing opposition coalition, the MUD, agreeing to a series of electoral guarantees with the Maduro government.

Meanwhile, MUD-aligned opposition leaders Julio Borges and Carlos Vecchio were present in the OAS meeting and asked for more pressure to be put on to Venezuela to prevent the upcoming presidential elections.

In recent months, Borges and Vecchio have been on an international tour lobbying conservative governments throughout the hemisphere and in Europe for further and tougher sanctions against Caracas. Last August, the MUD publicly supported the Trump administration’s economic sanctions targeting Venezuela and its state oil company PDVSA.