Savannah News Online Reporting Only What Matters Most
Related Articles
Tamale, Ghana – The Deputy Prime Minister of Cape Verde has admitted that the country is going through its worst economic crisis since independence in 1975.
According to Dr Olavo Correia, “since Cape Verde’s independence, the country has never been faced with an economic, social, financial and budgetary situation of the magnitude we are facing today.”
Despite this, the Prime Minister has continued to look unconcerned and rather focuses more on ensuring that a Venezuelan Diplomat Alex Saab, who faces extradition to the Uinted States, remains in illegal detention in the country.
Although, the Prime Minister attributes the country’s financial crisis to the COVD-19 pandemic, opposition figures say the country’s economy has seriously dipped because he has been preoccupied with geopolitics instead of focusing on pressing domestic matters.
Sources, who pleaded anonymity to this reporter, claim that in pandering to the politically motivated United States pursuit of the Venezuelan diplomat Alex Saab, the Prime Minister and his Minister of the Interior, have systematically destroyed the good image of Cape Verde.
Cape Verde arrested Saab who is also Venezuela’s Deputy Ambassador to the African Union on 12 June 2020 based on a request from the United States government. On 15 March 2021, the ECOWAS Court of Justice in a unanimous decision delivered by Judge Rapporteur Justice Januaria Costa, a senior Cape Verde jurist and the country’s former Minster of Justice, ruled that Saab’s arrest and detention were illegal due to numerous violations of Cape Verde Law, and ordered that he should be freed and the extradition process terminated.
The past few months have however seen the actions of Prime Minister Correia and his Interior Minister resulting in Cape Verde defying three binding decisions of the ECOWAS Court, earning heavy criticism from leaders of the other 14 Member States at last month’s ECOWAS summit held in Ghana.
More recently, Cape Verde has been ordered to halt Saab’s extradition by the United Nations Human Rights Committee in Geneva, while it investigates allegations of torture and denial to specialist healthcare which Saab, as a cancer patient, has been refused for over a year.
By SavannahNewsOnline.Com/Sam Ell
