So I hope we will change course and move more aggressively ahead on the areas that I see as concerns in terms of our democracy programs.

I'm hoping that the administration and the State Department will be more vigorously engaged in helping civil society.

How can we work with the OAS to strengthen its resolve in pursuing enforcement of its Inter-American Democratic Charter?

We have pressed the Nicaraguan Government to invite credible domestic and international election observers.

I appreciate that we face challenges, and we had challenges in Poland and we had challenges in what was Czechoslovakia before it became the Czech Republic.

But maybe one of the least commented on threats to democracy in Latin America is the silencing of civil society.

In my view, freedom of the press is under attack in several countries in Latin America, in some cases by governments, in other cases by the threat of violence from private actors.

I think that entities and governments, particularly authoritarian governments, in the hemisphere are clearly going to push back.

We celebrate that achievement and we seek to further solidify the pillars of democracy: fair and free elections, the independent operation of the legislative and executive branches, an independent judiciary, respect for civil society, and…

We believe that the early presence of a sufficient number of credible and well-trained international observers will be important to the credibility of the process.

IRI has had a robust Cuba program for many years that supports civil society and conducts unique polling on the views of Cubans on a variety of issues.