For the past five years, the 34-country Organization of American States, once a sleepy regional bureaucracy, has been a vocal critic of Venezuela's autocratic regime. But now, several countries are mounting an effort to replace OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro and tone down the group's criticism of Venezuela and other dictatorships.
Two opposition candidates, one backed by Peru and the other by two Caribbean countries close to Venezuela, are campaigning to prevent Almagro from winning a new term as secretary general in the March 20 OAS elections. It will be a secret vote, held at the OAS headquarters in Washington, D.C.
I talked with both anti-Almagro candidates in recent days. While they are politically different, it's clear that if either of them wins, the new OAS leader will be far less outspoken about abuses not just in Venezuela, but also in countries such as Nicaragua and Bolivia.
One of the opposition candidates, Ecuador's Maria Fernanda Espinosa, is backed by Antigua and Barbuda and St. Vincent and the Grenadines, two Caribbean countries that belong to the Venezuelan-backed radical leftist ALBA regional bloc. Espinosa was foreign minister under Ecuador's former President Rafael Correa, a populist leftist leader who now is facing corruption charges.
Venezuelan ruler Nicolas Maduro has not publicly endorsed Espinosa, but her critics say there's no question she's Maduro's candidate.
When I asked Espinosa if she considers Maduro a dictator, as Almagro has long branded the Venezuelan ruler, she changed the subject. But she made it clear that, if elected, she would not make any personal public statements about the Venezuelan ruler.
"The (OAS) secretary general should not be a person who issues personal positions," Espinosa told me. "The secretary general's role should be to execute, lead and act based on the decisions of member countries."
Taking a tacit swipe at Almagro, she added that the OAS chief should "heal the wounds that have been unnecessarily opened among brotherly countries in this hemisphere."
Of course, that's exactly what Maduro wants. Requiring a consensus by the 34 member countries to authorize the OAS chief to criticize Venezuela _ or any other dictatorship _ would amount to silencing him or her. It would only take the votes of one or two Venezuelan allies to keep the OAS chief from making any critical statement.
The second opposition candidate, Hugo de Zela, Peru's ambassador to Washington, is no friend of Maduro. (He told me, "There's no doubt he's a dictator.") But he said that he seeks to build a more constructive dialogue among OAS member nations to solve the Venezuelan crisis.
"The OAS should be a place to seek agreements, and that's not what's happening right now," de Zela told me.
Colombia officially submitted Almagro's candidacy for reelection, which is backed by the United States, Brazil, Uruguay's incoming government and several other countries. Almagro seems to be the front-runner now, but it's far from clear that he'll get the 18 votes needed for his reelection.
In what looked like a signal of Mexico's support for Espinosa, the foreign ministry's director of regional organizations, Efrain Guadarrama, tweeted on Feb. 13 that the OAS leadership "needs an urgent renovation" and a "woman Secretary General."
Both Espinosa and de Zela's main criticism of Almagro is that he has focused too much on Venezuela, at the expense of other regional issues.
That's absurd, because Venezuela is Latin America's worst humanitarian crisis in decades. At least 4.7 million Venezuelans have fled to neighboring countries over the past five years. The Venezuelan economy collapsed by 60% during the same period. Millions more may escape in the near future, straining the economies of Colombia, Ecuador, Chile, Brazil and other Latin American countries.
If that's not a regional crisis, what is it? If the OAS does not focus on Venezuela, what should it be focusing on? Holding gala dinners to celebrate member countries' independence anniversaries?
Based on the opposition candidates' statements, if any of them wins, the OAS would return to what it once was: an irrelevant institution where governments sent their retiring diplomats to have a good time in Washington and discuss meaningless issues.
