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By Staff Writers, teleSUR
teleSUR
Friday, Jul 17, 2015
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| Jacobson says she is "very concerned" about Machado's suspension from holding public office | Photo: Reuters
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Venezuela hit back at U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Roberta Jacobson Wednesday, after she took to social media to defend a controversial, far-right politician who was suspended from holding office.
Comments like Jacobson's make it “very difficult” for Venezuela and the United States to improve their currently rocky relations, Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez said.
“Respect the institutions of Venezuela, respect our democratic life,” Rodriguez said via Twitter.
She followed up Spanish-language tweets with a few in English.
The tweets were provoked by a tirade of anti-Venezuela and anti-Cuba tweets from Jacobson earlier in the day, in which she accuses both countries of problems with their democratic processes. In one of them she specifically mentions Maria Corina Machado, who was is currently facing a 12 month suspension from holding public office in Venezuela, after the government's auditing body for elected representatives said it found evidence of inconsistencies in Machado's financial statements.
The inconsistencies relate to Machado's declared records of expenditures charged to the public purse. Under Venezuelan law, failure by politicians to properly declare public expenditures can lead to temporarily suspensions on holding office, such as in Machado's case.
The allegations against her date back to Machado’s as a member of the National Assembly. She was removed from office in 2014, after legislators deemed she had violated the Constitution by representing Panama at an Organization of American States meeting – a violation of the country’s constitution.
In a separate probe, Machado is also being investigated under allegations of involvement in a 2014 plot to assassinate President Nicolas Maduro.
Machado denies any wrongdoing, arguing she has been subjected to undue scrutiny as part of a political campaign against her.
The former legislator has long been a staunch critic of the Venezuelan government. In 2002, Machado was one of the most prominent signatories to the Carmona Decree, the manifesto of a group of right-wing business leaders that staged a coup that temporarily overthrew President Hugo Chavez. When the short-lived coup was reversed, Machado claimed she accidentally signed the political document during a casual visit to the presidential palace at the height of the chaos, mistaking it for a visitor sign-in sheet.
The far-right politician was also the head of an organization that received millions from the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy.
Despite the fact Roberta Jacobson is set to become U.S. ambassador to Mexico, she has provoked several Latin American governments with her tweets about democracy, most recently Ecuador.
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