Insulza Dot No!

HRF OPINION (March 24, 2010) – Today, the most powerful inter-governmental body of the Americas, the Organization of American States, will reelect Chilean politician Jose Miguel Insulza as its Secretary General. After five years of inefficacy and inconsistency in applying the Inter-American Democratic Charter, Secretary General Insulza’s reelection will irreparably damage the most significant regional initiative of the last decade.

The Inter-American Democratic Charter was approved in 2001 to guard against the erosion of democracy by democratically-elected leaders. It was crafted by all 34 OAS member states under the auspices of the Peruvian government in the wake of Alberto Fujimori’s anti-democratic regime. Once elected, Fujimori had set about dismantling Peru’s democracy. He shut down an opposing Congress, eliminated the judiciary’s independence, persecuted political opponents, censored the media, and corrupted the electoral body. By 2001, military coups d’états were considered a thing of the past and it was Fujimori’s style of elected authoritarianism that was perceived as the biggest challenge to democracy in the Americas.

For the first time in world history, an international legal document enumerated all essential elements and fundamental components of democracy—fundamental rights and liberties, freedom of expression and the press, rule of law, separation of powers, judiciary independence, fair and free elections, and a multi-party system. This legal instrument set about a specific “democracy clause” comprised of tools for the OAS to act in the face of “threats,” “alterations,” and “interruptions” of democracy by elected and non-elected leaders alike. But, assuming that member states would have a conflict of interest in facilitating any OAS action against themselves, there was one legal tool to achieve the mission—a five-year, tenured, independent Secretary General with the power to denounce anti-democratic governments, and, call for a vote of the Permanent Council and the General Assembly to suspend them.

If the democratic standard set by the 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter had been in place since its founding, Batista, Pinochet, Banzer, Videla, Stroessner, Noriega and Cedras would have righteously been denied the privilege to sit at the OAS. The same would have occurred with Trujillo, Somoza, Perón, Castro, Torres, Velasco, Torrijo, Allende, Ortega, Aristide and Fujimori.

Then Secretary General Cesar Gaviria failed to invoke the democracy clause against Hugo Chavez in 2001. His intervention against Chavez’s early anti-democratic actions would have likely avoided the circumstances that led to the coup of 2002. The democracy clause was rightfully triggered by that coup but it was too little, too late. In the following years, Gaviria consistently failed to confront Chavez as he took over all instruments of power and turned them against the Venezuelan opposition and the independent media.

This is the context Insulza was confronted with when elected Secretary General in 2005. His obligation was to reset the OAS stance against the erosion of democracy. Sadly, as the years passed, Insulza failed to activate the democracy clause against Venezuela and idly witnessed the erosion of democracy in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. In 2009, however, Insulza did invoke the democracy clause in Honduras. This time, the Secretary General’s actions were wrongful.

In an apparent attempt to extend his time in office, then Honduran President Manuel Zelaya’s ploy to rewrite the Honduran constitution was an “opinion poll” aimed at electing a “Constituent Asembly.” It was called a “poll” in order to circumvent any type of judicial scrutiny in Honduras that specifically forbade Zelaya’s action.

Instead of deterring him from perpetrating his scheme, Insulza congratulated Zelaya and sent him an “accompaniment mission” (there is no legal, institutional, or even informal definition for this bizarre term in OAS history) consisting of the same OAS senior officials whose job is to observe elections throughout the continent. Raul Alconada, Insulza’s deputy, appeared next to the Foreign Minister of Honduras explaining to an incredulous nation, that the OAS was “just accompanying a political act, as we have done countless times in countless countries.” This prompted a June 25 resolution by the Honduran Congress expressing “profound outrage” and calling for the OAS to “immediately withdraw” its mission.

On June 28, after the military had acted to expel Zelaya at gunpoint but before Congress had met, the president of the Supreme Court (who was in a meeting with both the president of Congress and head of the Honduran Electoral Tribunal) called Insulza by telephone to tell him he was “examining” the way to restore the constitutional order in light of the coup. This is when Insulza had the chance to redeem himself. Insulza—without justifying or condoning the forced removal of Zelaya—should have recognized Zelaya’s repeated anti-democratic actions and offered his good offices to gain as much support from the international community for the Supreme Court, so that they could duly declare the coup d’état void and unconstitutional; and so that any criminal proceedings against President Zelaya, and his eventual suspension or removal from office as a result of a presidential trial, would be carried out according to the Honduran Constitution and with full international support.

But no, Insulza blithely circumvented the issue of Zelaya’s erosion of democracy. Two days later the Honduran Supreme Court validated the coup. So, after aiding the erosion of democracy that led to the coup, Insulza made it worse by isolating the only institution capable of reverting the coup. Honduras quit the OAS and went it alone. The OAS rightly voted to suspend Honduras from its membership (our organization was the first human rights organization to call upon the OAS to suspend Honduras), but it grossly failed in assessing the situation and identifying how best to restore democracy. The new de facto government restricted freedom of the press and violently suppressed public protests that favored Zelaya’s return. However, it left in place plans for a national election to take place five months later. Rather than contributing to a swift return for democracy by backing the election and monitoring the process, Insulza pushed for a dead end: Zelaya or nothing.

Lacking the tools and specific provisions provided in the 2001 Inter-American Democratic Charter, between 1948 and 1990, a weak OAS still managed to condemn the anti-democratic governments of Trujillo (1960), Castro (1962), Somoza (1979) and Noriega (1989). Under a seminal 1991 OAS resolution, the OAS managed to timidly act against Cedras (1994) and Fujimori (1999). Since 2005, under the standards of the 2001 Democratic Charter, Insulza’s actions have added gross incompetence to Gaviria’s previous inefficiency in dealing with the early erosion of democracy in Venezuela. Insulza has neglected the prairie-fire like erosion of democracy by the presidents of Bolivia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Add to this that he personally campaigned for and achieved an organizational pardon for Cuba—the only standing full-fledged dictatorship in the Americas.

In the midst of popular despair that dismisses the OAS as a useless Washington sinecure for Latin American politicians, Insulza need only look in the mirror to see who is most to blame. His reelection will be a travesty.