Media Center

Press Release

Vice President of Panama Invites OAS Countries to Debate the Reintegration of Honduras to the Institution

During a special session of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS) today, Member States welcomed the Vice President and Minister of Foreign Affairs of Panama, Juan Carlos Varela Rodriguez, who called upon the countries of the region to “look for multilateral mechanisms to solve the main problems of our people.”

Welcoming the representative of the government of President Ricardo Martinelli, OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza highlighted the initiatives the new government has undertaken and recognized the contribution made by the Panamanian government to restore democracy in Honduras.

“You represent a new generation of politicians in the Americas, who have demonstrated a public service vocation and who have decided to undertake as a central task the improvement of the living conditions of their fellow citizens,” Insulza declared.

The Secretary General also took the opportunity to recognize the joint efforts by the OAS and Panama on electoral issues, “particularly in the implementation of a quality management system that will make Panama’s Electoral Court one of the first to receive the ISO 9001 certification. This is evidence of the significance that your country assigns to electoral processes,” he added.

Addressing the representatives of the 33 OAS Member States, the Vice President of Panama recalled that over the last 10 months the region has gone through various crises, among them, the crisis in Honduras and the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile. “A multilateral mechanism should be focused on creating the conditions for countries to be able to interact and present concrete solutions when extraordinary situations that affect our democracies occur,” he noted.

Regarding those situations, Foreign Minister Varela called upon the member countries to open the debate about the reintegration of Honduras to the hemispheric institution. “To avoid the debate just because we do not want to find differences, if there are any, is a mistake, because we can lose the organization’s capacity for bringing us together,” he affirmed.

Minister Varela also called for an evaluation and assessment of what happened during the Honduran crisis and to find solutions by consensus. He affirmed that “we cannot sentence 6 million Honduran people, an entire country, to isolation, and much less to see its authorities, based on the popular mandate they have received, to be forced to move forward on their own when they deserve first and foremost everybody’s support.”

In this sense, the Central American Vice President invited OAS countries to turn the page and seek mechanisms “so that understanding and dialogue win over isolation and division in the continent,” adding that “President Lobo fulfilled the promise of installing the Truth Commission in which the OAS is playing an important role. If we do not back up this Commission and the steps that are being taken in Honduras, then all efforts as a multilateral organization would be made in vain.”

Finally, and reiterating his country’s commitment to support the strengthening of the OAS and its capacity for responding, the Panamanian minister invited countries of the hemisphere to broaden dialogue on the issues that unite them. “Let’s not be caught in unnecessary debates. In the end the great evils we must confront are insecurity, poverty, unemployment and the global economic situation,” he concluded.

Reference: E-171/10