Governance quality in OAS ‘rising’

Member countries of the Organisation of American States (OAS) face issues such as a lack of transparency in governance, bureaucracy and corruption and Secretary-General Jose Miguel Insulza thinks that “the quality of governance is certainly progressing” in the OAS.

Meanwhile, the OAS is willing to cooperate in areas of social and economic development with Guyana and Insulza was scheduled to meet President Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday and was likely to raise these issues with him.

Insulza is a special invitee at the 19th Summit of the Rio Group being held at the Guyana and in an interview with the Stabroek News at Le Meridien Pegasus Hotel yesterday, he said Guyana could expect the OAS’s continued participation in the institutional development dimension. He also said there was the possibility of cooperation in social and economic processes in which it is involved. “That is something we have to discuss with the authorities. We have a developmental role as well,” he said.

Insulza said some governments in Latin America in particular, have problems with lack of transparency and corruption. The OAS is currently “trying very hard to implement” the Convention on the Elimination of Corruption, he said.

He added that the OAS also has problems with some governments which might not really be corrupt but which do not pass information on to the people leaving them in the dark or to find information as best as they could. “If the government conducts its business secretly no one can say that it is corrupt or it is keeping the money but it is not a good thing in a democracy to transact business in secret. That is why I said that transparency and corruption are not synonyms but they have linkages,” he said.

Asked whether he was satisfied with the level of governance in the region, he replied in the negative. However, he said it was improving though many problems persisted. He said there was need for strengthening government institutions to make them respected and accepted as the quality of the leader of the government is reflected in the manner in which the government operates.

Democracy

Insulza said the climate of democracy was good in the region in spite of several comments to the contrary. “It is better than it has ever been,” he said adding that those governments, “whether they call themselves right or left, whatever ideology they espouse, they all have the same challenges – challenges of poverty, inequality and discrimination, and the environment.” However, he said there was very good economic growth over the past four or five years.

Poverty and inequality were the expression of region’s problems rooted in politics and in how well the region’s people were being governed, he said stating that the challenge was how governments dealt with the issues of security and crime, transparency and corruption, and poverty.

Asked whether the OAS was concerned about more governments leaning to the left or socialist path, Insulza said eight of the countries of South and Central America were leaning to the left but the OAS was not concerned “with whether they are left or right,” he said.

“There was a time when left meant wrong and right meant right during the Cold War,” he said adding, “that is not the case with the OAS. In the OAS, everybody is equal. The decision of which economic system to select is the decision of the country. What we do at the OAS is to ensure that the system is carried out democratically, with respect for democracy, the rule of law for the people. Our business is democracy, not capitalism, not socialism.”

At the suggestion that there could be a spilt in the OAS with some countries backing the USA and some backing Cuba and Venezuela, Insulza said, “that is not a big problem today. There are some ideological discussions among some countries that are taking place but rhetorically they are not as strong as they were some time ago. They are not affecting the normality of the process.”

Insulza said his priorities as OAS Secretary General were linked to the general priorities in the region and applied to what occurred from year to year. For example, one of the priorities had to do with the quality of the democratic processes and the strengthening of democracy.

Crises

He said that over the past two years, the OAS had dedicated a lot of time to these two, electoral processes and the strengthening of institutions of governance. He recalled that when he became Secretary General there were several crises, and problems of governance in three countries with fragile democracies, in particular Haiti, where there was a provisional government. Haiti’s elections last year, were the best ever in its history, he declared.

Ten days after he took office, Insulza said, he had to travel to Bolivia because the Bolivian government announced its resignation. From Bolivia, “I had to run to Nicaragua because it was said that the government was about to fall.” He noted that those crises have been well channelled and the governments were in control.

The issue of human rights is another priority, he said, adding that the OAS was one of the best-recognised systems in dealing with this issue through an independent commission, which is supported by a court. Some member countries are affiliated to the court and some are not but they are all members of the commission. Even though recommendations are not always favourably accepted, he said, everyone respects the system because it is trusted.

The only problem that the Human Rights Commission experiences, he said is that it was overburdened with a lot of work and there is not enough time to examine some cases. Among the issues dealt with are freedom of expression, gender, problems of the indigenous people, problems of incarceration in the regions’ prisons – all deemed violations of human rights.

Describing the commission as one of the star organs of the OAS, he said it was doing a good job with the resources available but could do better if it were better resourced.

On border issues Insulza said that if the countries involved were to ask the OAS to participate in resolving them, it would respond. With regard to Guyana and Venezuela, he said both countries would have to make the request since the OAS does not act on the request of only one country.

He noted that in the case of the border dispute between Guyana and Suriname the OAS lent its support by facilitating the hearing of the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea at its headquarters in Washington DC last year.

As regards Belize and Guatemala, he said both countries had asked the OAS to mediate and they signed an agreement to move the process forward if it could not be resolved satisfactorily by the OAS. “We don’t act and we don’t issue any kind of opinion unless two or more countries ask us to do that,” he said.

Asked about changing the perception that the OAS was a ‘Governments’ Club’ Insulza said he never perceived the organization as such stating that it was an institution that has the best dialogues with the civil society.

He said when the assembly meets in June there would be over 100 members of civil society present for dialogue with the ministers as a means of making more room for the other powers of democratic societies. While he would always look to institutionalise more the participation of civil society to ensure wider consultation, he said that civil society certainly was not meant to make the decisions in the OAS. He noted that in Caricom, the United Nations, the European Union and the African Union it was the governments that made the decisions.

Insulza said the OAS believes in regional organisations and sub-regional organisations among governments and among public institutions that are financed by the citizens of the region.

The OAS has a policy of cooperation and enjoys cooperating with Caricom, Merco-sur, the South American Community of Nations, the Andean community, and the Rio Group for among other issues political consultation. “W
e pay a lot of attention to what is discussed in the Rio Group.” He said the discussions should have some bearing on some of the issues he touched on in this interview.

Asked whether Caricom nationals were being sidestepped for promotion within the OAS Secretariat, Insulza said that very much depends on the way it was looked at. He said the largest single group of high-level professionals attached to the OAS Secretariat comes from the Caribbean. The public relations department is predominantly Caribbean, the Assistant Secretary-General is a Caricom national and two of the directors of the seven to eight-member OAS directorate are Caricom nationals. “I don’t think that is unfair to Caricom by any means,” he said.