Race to Lead OAS Highlights Group’s Growing Clout

The race to lead the Organization of American States has narrowed to three candidates, with Mexican Foreign Minister Luis Ernesto Derbez emerging as a somewhat puzzling belated entry.

Just a month ago, Derbez was telling reporters that he would be a candidate in Mexico’s 2006 presidential election. Then, in a surprising turnabout, President Vicente Fox announced Dec. 7 that he was putting Derbez’s hat in the ring for OAS chief.

Derbez’s bid to be OAS secretary-general may stem as much from internal Mexican politics as from Fox’s desire that Mexico play a more important international role.

Derbez’s departure from the presidential sweepstakes cleared the way for Fox’s favorite, Interior Minister Santiago Creel, to become the presidential candidate of Fox’s National Action Party.

Neither Derbez, a former World Bank economist, nor his associates in the Foreign Ministry were available for comment this week. Fox said this month that Derbez has “credibility, respect and, furthermore, leadership qualities that will give a great dynamic to the OAS.”

The tight race for the top job at the hemispheric group highlights changes in the alliance. Over the last decade, the group has grown from a cushy -- some would say impotent -- club for former leaders and ambassadors to one with considerable clout in human rights, counter-terrorism and democracy issues. As such, the competition for the post of secretary has taken on some urgency, with candidates lobbying fiercely for support.

In addition to Derbez, former Salvadoran President Francisco Flores and Chilean Interior Minister Jose Miguel Insulza are leading contenders. The candidates would need a simple majority of votes by 34 member nations to win.

The next general assembly meeting is scheduled for June, but an earlier session is possible if one candidate locks up the votes.

The winner will replace former Costa Rican President Miguel Angel Rodriguez, who was forced to resign Oct. 8 amid a corruption scandal. He had served only two weeks of a five-year term and was the first Central American to lead the OAS.

Derbez has spent the last three weeks visiting most of the 15 nations of the Caribbean Community, or Caricom. The votes of Caribbean nations count as much as those of hemispheric giants. Publicly, Derbez already has the support of Canada, Bolivia and Belize.

Insulza is waging his own intense campaign. Chile’s foreign minister, Ignacio Walker, said last week that his colleague had commitments for at least 10 of the 18 votes needed to win, including Brazil and Argentina. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez also has commented favorably on Insulza’s candidacy without committing his nation’s vote.

Flores appears to have the support of the United States -- the 800-pound gorilla in the selection process -- which is on record as favoring a candidate who is a former president and hails from Central America.

A source at the U.S. State Department, who asked to be unnamed, said this week that the Bush administration strongly favored a former president, which would exclude Derbez and Insulza. Rodriguez’s predecessor as secretary-general was former Colombian President Cesar Gaviria, whose performance had been widely praised.

“We need a secretary-general who is politically savvy, knows how countries interact with each other, who can deal easily as an equal with presidents, prime ministers and foreign ministers and who has had executive experience,” the State Department official said.

Others said naming a Central American would be good policy, because it would focus hemispheric attention on that region’s daunting gang, drug trafficking and poverty problems. But Flores has been criticized by several human rights groups for his record as president, and neighboring Honduras has withheld its support.

Mexican analysts theorize that Fox would never have proposed Derbez without first getting a commitment from the United States to support him, especially if Flores falls short.

“If Mexican diplomacy did its job properly, then it undoubtedly locked in Washington’s support before nominating Derbez,” political scientist Rosanna Fuentes-Berain told the Inter Press Service news agency this month.

In any event, Derbez’s efforts already have ruffled hemispheric feathers. Isabel Allende, a Chilean lawmaker who is the niece of late President Salvador Allende, accused Fox this month of breaking his agreement with Chilean President Ricardo Lagos to jointly decide on an OAS candidate.

“The Mexican president promised to coordinate with the Chilean president, and he didn’t do it,” Allende said. Fox announced Derbez’s candidacy “without any consultation or coordination with Chile. It’s regrettable.”

Founded in 1948, the OAS was too passive for most of its history in the face of the United States’ interventionism in the hemisphere, said Rafael Fernandez de Castro, editor of the Spanish-language edition of Foreign Affairs magazine.

Now that the region is largely free of military dictatorships and has embraced democracy, hemispheric multilateralism is potentially on its best footing, as long as the OAS’ leader can act as an honest broker for its constituents and “stand up to the United States,” Fernandez de Castro said.

“It’s the one big job in the hemisphere, apart from the Inter-American Development Bank, that pulls together all the countries,” said Sidney Weintraub, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “Whether it has power or authority depends on it having a substantial leader.”