21/05/2010 Social Affairs, Health and Sustainable Development
Strasbourg, 21.05.2010 – The situation of local democracy in Venezuela will be central to the exchange of views which the Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly’s (PACE) Committee on Local and Regional Affairs will hold in Paris on Friday 28 May 2009 starting at 9.30 am (55, avenue Kléber, 75116 Paris, Boissière metro station). The meeting will be open to the press.
Prominent among the participants are Diego Arria, former Ambassador of Venezuela to the UN, and Juan Carlos Alvarez, son and lawyer of Oswaldo Alvarez, a Venezuelan objector and former candidate to the Presidency of the Republic.
Oswaldo Alvarez, who was Governor of Zulia State at the beginning of the 1990s, was arrested on 22 March this year after having pronounced critical judgments on television, charged with public incitation of lawbreaking and dissemination of false information. He was released on 14 May but will have to appear before a court every fortnight. He is still subject to a prison sentence.