Beyond the diplomatic rapprochement sealed by the summit meeting between Colombia’s new President, Juan Manuel Santos, and President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela last weekend in the Colombian city of Cartagena de Indias, there were signs that another festering sore in Latin American relations might soon be healed.
In a surprise move, President Porfirio Lobo of Honduras was invited to meet with the other two presidents to discuss smoothing the way for the lifting of Honduras’s suspension from the Organization of American States, following the overthrow of President Manuel Zelaya in June 2009.
It transpires that the Colombian leader had been quietly and diplomatically working towards this meeting over a period of five months, as Mr Chávez’s support for Mr Zelaya and hostility towards Mr Lobo were widely recognised as one of the major obstacles to reinstating Honduras at the OAS and ending its pariah status with most of Latin America.
Ever since Mr Lobo’s controversial election in November 2009, when the coup government of Roberto Micheletti defied majority international opinion by holding the ballot without addressing the issue of Mr Zelaya’s return from exile and immunity from prosecution, and since Mr Lobo’s inauguration in January 2010, the Latin American left and Mr Chávez in particular have refused to recognise Mr Lobo, with Mr Chávez referring to him as the “de facto president.”
Last weekend’s meeting may prove to be game-changing, not least because of the role of Mr Santos who, in the short period since he assumed the Colombian presidency, has striven to distance himself from the combative attitude of his predecessor, Alvaro Uribe, and has shown signs of a genuine willingness to pursue closer relations with neighbouring Venezuela and Ecuador, as well as forging deeper regional unity.
Mr Lobo, understandably, wishes Honduras to return to the OAS and needs to normalise relations with those Latin American countries that have withheld recognition of his government. The political and economic strains of being diplomatically ostracized cannot be sustained for much longer.
Mr Zelaya, at the same time part of the problem and part of the solution, talks about the re-establishment of institutional democracy in Honduras and desires to end his exile in the Dominican Republic, with a guarantee of immunity in his homeland. His position is supported by Mr Chávez and other members of UNASUR, such as Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Ecuador and Paraguay.
Mr Chávez, as the self-appointed standard-bearer of the Latin American left and with his influence over the ALBA countries, is generally regarded as the key to unlocking the impasse at the OAS, which is split between opposition to and support for the reintegration of Honduras.
Now, Messrs Chávez and Santos have announced that they will work together on a document on the reincorporation of Honduras into the OAS, most likely to be presented to the next OAS General Assembly in El Salvador in June.
Honduras, for its part, has made it clear that it would prefer to return to the OAS in the same way that it was asked to leave, ie, by unanimous vote. True, only a two-thirds majority vote of the other 33 members of the OAS is needed, but the Lobo government is desirous of the support of all the members. Anything less would obviously leave a cloud still hanging over the whole process.
Indeed, there appears to be a strong sense that Latin America and the Caribbean would like to see the matter finally put to rest. But whilst most of the Latin American left would probably follow Mr Chávez’s lead, Brazil’s position, consistently principled in its rejection of the coup in Honduras and its calls for Mr Zelaya’s reinstatement, is still open to question, particularly under new President, Dilma Rousseff. Some more diplomatic legwork may therefore be called for and it is quite likely that the Chávez-Santos recommendation might be discussed in UNASUR, with a view to building a consensus before asking the OAS membership to pronounce on the matter. If this route is taken, there may well be a role for Guyana as the UNASUR chair.
