QUO VADIS OAS 

By Rupert Sorhaindo

Earlier this year (on March 20th ), amidst all the chaos and concerns occasioned by the covid19 pandemic that was gripping the United States capital, Luis Almagro was re-elected  Secretary-General of the Organization of American States  (OAS). The controversial Uruguayan diplomat received 23 votes while the candidate nominated by CARICOM member states St. Vincent and Grenadines and Antigua and Barbuda, Maria Fernanda Espinosa of Ecuador received 10. The third candidate, Peruvian Hugo de Zela had earlier withdrawn his candidacy in a strategic manoeuver that had been anticipated.

The election took place at the OAS Headquarters in Washington, D.C despite the urgent requests by a number of OAS member states including all CARICOM member states (with the exception of Haiti), to postpone the event in view of the serious prevailing covid19 conditions that had caused the Washington authorities, PAHO and the US Center for Disease Control (CDC) to issue protocols limiting the size of gatherings! 

The election received scant media attention, with attendees having been limited to the thirty-four member-state representatives and Secretariat officials. Reporters were not allowed in the chamber and were not permitted to interview participants outside the headquarters. In any event, news out of the United States was at that time, dominated by the reporting on President Trump’s mishandling of the developing covid19  pandemic that was beginning to establish a foothold in that country. The farcical nature of the election could be gleaned from the fact that Venezuela was represented by the appointee of Juan Guaido who is not recognized by the United Nations and the vast majority of UN member states, as the leader of that country.

Almagro’s candidacy was presented by the United States and its two staunchest allies in the hemispheric organization - Brazil and Colombia (both members of the pro-US and anti-Maduro and anti-Cuba Lima group). And considering the significant block of 14 CARICOM votes (four short of a majority) in the 34 member OAS, it is not surprising that that region would have been wooed by the United States. In fact, the US President and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both hosted selected CARICOM leaders at meetings in Florida and Jamaica respectively –in such a manner as to provoke strong reactions from the then Chairperson of CARICOM, Prime Minister of Barbados Mia Mottley and several other regional leaders who refused to participate in the Jamaica meeting. The Trump/Pompeo ‘divide and rule’ strategy seems to have been effective since at least FIVE of the CARICOM-block votes went to Almagro. 

The behavior of Mr. Almagro as Secretary-General of the OAS in facilitating regime change efforts in Venezuela, Bolivia and even in Dominica, under the guise of promoting democracy through electoral reform, drew much criticism from many observers in CARICOM  and beyond who saw him as a divisive figure who was more interested in furthering the foreign policy agenda of the United States in the hemisphere rather than in engaging with all member states as equals in attempting to resolve hemispheric conflicts through diplomacy and dialogue. 

The role of the OAS Secretary General in laying the foundation for the violence which led to the coup d’etat that saw the removal of Evo Morales as President of Bolivia has been placed in sharp focus by several independent experts, who after an exhaustive analysis of the results of the 2019 Bolivian elections concluded, that there was no basis for the OAS Electoral Observation Mission’s assertion of electoral fraud and that Morales was the clear winner! Curiously, in the course of the campaign leading to the December 6, 2019, general elections in Dominica, an opposition spokesman referred to the ouster of Evo Morales, and anticipated intervention by the OAS to mete out a similar fate to Prime Minister Skerrit, in the event that the “election was stolen’!

Concerns have been expressed in many quarters about the impotence of a highly polarized OAS as it seeks to address the myriad of challenges confronting countries in the hemisphere; and the events that have been unfolding in the United States since Mr. Almagro’s reelection certainly support those concerns: the Hemisphere has become the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic due largely to the failed leadership in the US and Brazil; the US has withdrawn from the World Health Organization with serious implications for the health of the millions of vulnerable citizens in OAS member states; the undermining of human rights, justice and the rule of law by the Trump administration, with the  likelihood of voter suppression of black and “brown” Americans in the November 2020  US elections; the naked aggression of the US and its allies in Colombia who have harbored mercenaries who have staged armed incursions into Venezuela with the intention of removing Nicolas Maduro from office; imposition of a naval blockade on Venezuela by the US, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, under the pretext of drug interdiction; and the list goes on…

It would be ironical indeed if CARICOM was to insist on the OAS mounting its ‘gold standard’ Electoral

Observation Mission, to monitor and report on the upcoming US elections in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, with the Trump administration already positioning itself to disenfranchise millions of American citizens by opposing efforts at facilitating voting by mail, in much the same manner that the OAS sought to enable the disenfranchisement of Dominicans in the Diaspora in our December 6, 2020 elections, by recommending unworkable electoral reform measures at the eleventh hour.