OAS/CUBA
Attack on democratic principles
BY ORLANDO GUTIERREZ
orlando@directorio.org
By approving a resolution that conditions Cuba's return to the OAS to
its adherence to the ''practices, goals and principles'' of the
institution, the attempt by Hugo Chávez's bloc to automatically and
unconditionally reinsert the Castro dictatorship in the institution was
temporarily foiled.
However, the immediate goal of the Chavista bloc is precisely to
redefine the practices, goals and principles of the Interamerican system
in order to consolidate their new strain of ''electoral dictatorships''
in the region, with the eventual objective of isolating the United
States diplomatically within the hemisphere and forcing it to coexist
with a new wave of emerging populist totalitarian states.
With the ideological leadership of the government of Rafael Correa in
Ecuador and supported by Cuba's political infrastructure and Chávez's
money, a new wave of authoritarian populists from St. Vincent and the
Grenadines to Bolivia set their sights on the 1962 OAS resolution and
its description of Marxism-Leninism as incompatible with the
Interamerican system in order to remove an obstacle to the
legitimization of their own efforts to concentrate government power,
suppress independent media and regulate civil liberties out of existence.
The sentiment shared by too many in the region, as expressed for example
by the presidents and foreign ministers of Ecuador and Honduras at the
OAS summit, considers Cuba's 50-year old dynastic totalitarianism a
''different kind of democracy,'' ''a legal and legitimate representative
of its people,'' an ''acceptable one party state.'' Sadly enough, the
discourse of governments such as Brazil, Argentina and Mexico is full of
moral ambiguity and confusion, and does not confront this verbal assault
of the very basic notions of human rights.
Unlike Asia, Africa or the Middle East, where democracies still vie for
ideological predominance against diverse types of despotism, the
concepts of inherent human rights and rule of law based on respect for
personal freedoms have prevailed in the Americas with the glaring
exception of Cuba. So much so, that in spite of their well organized
efforts, Chávez, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua and
Correa and company have had to confront significant political, social
and cultural resistance in their respective countries in their attempt
at suppressing citizen freedoms.
However, the Castro-Chávez bloc would change that by introducing a new
authoritarianism in the region that seeks to redefine the source of
political sovereignty away from individual rights, placing it in the
hands of vertical totalitarian states with no separation of powers and
no political accountability. They seek to make a 21st century fascism
amenable to the Americas.
The next round in this battle for the soul of the Interamerican system
lies with the Interamerican Democratic Charter. The totalitarians veil
their attack on the Charter, which enumerates the rights and freedoms
that have evolved over centuries of universal civilization, by referring
to it as an example of ''ideological colonialism,'' which would impose
an ''ethnocentric'' concept of democracy on the developing world. They
seek to dilute it and reconfigure it out of existence as they have with
their own constitutions back home.
Led by the United States, truly democratic governments in the hemisphere
must join to bolster the Interamerican Democratic Charter, the
Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, and other institutions in the
OAS that uphold pluralistic democracy and human rights as the essence of
the institution. Membership in this regional institution is not
worthwhile if this is not to be so. For the 21st century fascists in the
Western Hemisphere, it is not the Castros' 50-year old dictatorship that
must change in order to be accepted by a democratic community of
nations, but instead, that this community of nations abandon its
democratic principles in order to emulate the hemisphere's oldest
dictatorship.
Orlando Gutierrez is a member of the Cuban Democratic Directorate and
was part of a delegation of Cuban pro-democracy activists at the OAS
meeting in Honduras last week.
Attack on democratic principles - Other Views - MiamiHerald.com (8 June
2009)
http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/other-views/story/1086772.html
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