Diego Cevallos

MEXICO CITY, Mar 17 2005 (IPS) — A conservative foreign minister, a socialist interior minister and a right-wing former president are vying for the top position in the Organisation of American States (OAS) in a race that was never before so hard-fought or divided the region to this extent.

A new secretary-general is about to be elected, after a nearly four-month campaign in which, according to observers, promises of public posts and economic aid were offered and diplomatic pressure was applied, especially by the United States.

The contenders are Chile’s Interior Minister José Miguel Insulza, a 61-year-old lawyer with a graduate degree in political science; former Salvadoran president Francisco Flores (1999-2004), 45, a sociologist and political scientist with a masters degree in philosophy; and Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Derbez, a 58-year-old economist.

The representatives of the OAS member states agreed Wednesday in Washington, where the regional body is headquartered, that the election will be held Apr. 7.

That is seven months after the resignation of the last OAS secretary-general, former Costa Rican president Miguel Angel Rodríguez, who is under house arrest in his country in connection with a corruption scandal dating back to his presidential term (1998-2002).

The winning candidate will need the votes of at least 18 of the 34 OAS member states, a feat none of them are likely to pull off in the first round of voting, according to observers, who predict that a second round will be held in which the two most-voted candidates would face off.

"There has never been such a hard-fought race in the history of the OAS," Francisco Espino, a Mexican academic who specialises in foreign policy, told IPS.

"There has been, and continues to be, open and concealed friction between the candidates, which has revealed a region divided by political and diplomatic interests, that in any case must be considered legitimate," said the analyst.

The United States backs Flores, who was fully aligned with U.S. foreign policy when he served as president of El Salvador.

In the past few weeks, Washington has sent letters to several governments urging them to vote for the Salvadoran candidate – mentioning, in passing, agreements that their countries have already reached, or are getting ready to sign, with the United States.

"The United States has applied pressure in different ways to secure a victory for its candidate, and many countries feel caught between a rock and a hard place, especially the Caribbean nations, which are the smallest," said Espino.

Besides the support from Washington, whose candidates to the top OAS position have never lost, Flores has been officially endorsed by El Salvador, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic.

Insulza, who had already made an unsuccessful bid for the position of OAS secretary-general in the past, has the backing of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Venezuela and Uruguay.

Although Flores, of El Salvador’s right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance, and Insulza of Chile’s co-governing Socialist Party have the determined support of their own governments, some social and political sectors in their own countries have criticised their candidacies.

In El Salvador, leftist political groups and human rights organisations complain that Flores failed to respect recommendations from international bodies like the United Nations Commission on Human Rights and the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights when he was president, and criticise repressive policies adopted by his administration against youth gangs.

Also criticised were Flores’ close ties to Washington and his unconditional support for the war on Iraq, which he demonstrated by sending troops in August 2003 to take part in the ongoing occupation.

Insulza has also come under fire from human rights groups, including associations of the families of victims of the 1973-1990 dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, who are calling for legal reforms that would speed up the investigations and trials in more than 300 cases involving pending human rights violations committed by the de facto regime.

Derbez, meanwhile, who belongs to Mexico’s conservative governing National Action Party (PAN), faces no major problems on the domestic front, and has the guaranteed votes of his own country, as well as Canada, Belize, Bolivia, Honduras and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

Each of the candidates claims to have support from other nations as well, but these additional votes are not seen as a sure thing. For example, the Paraguayan government said it regards Derbez’s candidacy favourably, but also indicated that it approves of Insulza as well.

In the view of analyst Jorge Chabat at Mexico’s Centre for Economic Research and Teaching, the competition for the leadership of the OAS highlights the regional political trends that can be seen today in the Americas.

In general terms, the leftist governments of South America back the socialist candidate, Insulza, right-wing administrations in Central America are behind Flores, while the more centrist governments support Derbez, he said.

According to Espino, the United States has offered the governments that vote for Flores economic support and trade agreements, Chile promised Suriname the post of OAS assistant secretary general in exchange for backing for Insulza from the Caribbean states, and Mexico pledged assistance to the nations of Central America, if they choose Derbez.

In recent weeks, the candidates have presented their proposals for how they would administer the OAS to the regional body’s ambassadors. Although their approaches differ somewhat, they all promise to put a higher priority on alleviating poverty and strengthening democracy in the region.

They also pledge to come up with solutions to overcome the financial difficulties plaguing the OAS, which is in the grip of an acute financial crisis.

Acting secretary-general Luigi Einaudi warned that if the OAS does not obtain an additional 17.2 million dollars this year, it will not be able to fulfil its tasks.

In the 56 years since its founding, the OAS has been led by diplomats from Colombia, Chile, Costa Rica, Uruguay, Ecuador, Argentina and Brazil, and has often lived under the shadow of U.S. control, something that both Insulza and Derbez acknowledge, while pledging to make the OAS more independent.

The OAS endorsed the U.S.-backed overthrow of the democratically elected reformist government in Guatemala in 1954, expelled Cuba in 1962, and basically turned a blind eye to the U.S. invasions of the Dominican Republic in 1965, Grenada in 1983, and Panama in 1989.

It also proved completely incapable of curbing the bloody civil wars that tore apart several Central American countries in the 1980s, while allowing Washington to openly support dictatorships and repressive regimes throughout Latin America in the 1970s and early 1980s.

But while the OAS has acted more independently in recent years in terms of the protection and defence of human rights, the candidates have hardly referred to that question during their campaigns.

According to the London-based human rights organisation Amnesty International, the lack of clear and concrete proposals from the candidates on the human rights issues that gravely affect the continent is alarming.

In an open letter to Derbez, Flores and Insulza, Amnesty urged the candidates Wednesday to publicly express their thinking on crucial issues like impunity for human rights violations and attacks on human rights defenders, problems that the rights watchdog said are present in most countries in the region. It also asked them to explain what actions they plan to take in that regard.