Word Count: 2750 Changing of the Guard at the Organization
of American States
• The ongoing crises in Haiti and
Venezuela, and the lack of an institutional OAS role in both disputes, have
demonstrated that the hemisphere’s political forum is an ineffective and aging
mammoth that, without strong leadership, may soon be utterly useless. • The incoming Secretary General’s major
tasks will be to rejuvenate the OAS’s diminishing role in hemispheric affairs
and reverse the steady loss of its prestige and operational jurisdiction to the
United Nations. • While it will not be difficult for
Rodriguez to improve upon Gaviria’s egomaniacal
performance, his record as president of Costa Rica is steeped in mediocrity and
plagued by a general lack of seriousness and, thus, leaves little hope that his
performance as Secretary General of the OAS will be any more promising. After ten years as the head of the Organization
of American States (OAS), two-time Secretary General and former Colombian
president Cesar Gaviria will step down from his post
today and former Costa Rican president Miguel Angel Rodriguez Echevarria will become his successor. This transition began
at the 34th regular session of the OAS General Assembly, which took place last
June in
This analysis was
prepared by Alex Sanchez, COHA Research Fellow. The Council on Hemispheric
Affairs, founded in 1975, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan,
tax-exempt research and information organization. It has been described on the
Senate floor as being “one of the nation’s most respected bodies of scholars
and policy makers.” For more information, please see our web page at
www.coha.org; or contact our | ||||||||