Former Peruvian Foreign Minister accuses OAS of losing neutrality in favor of President Castillo

By Rodrigo Saldarriaga

The former Foreign Minister of Peru, Miguel Rodríguez Mackay, has accused the Organization of American States (OAS) and its Secretary General, Luis Almagro, of having lost their neutrality after expressing their support for the Peruvian government and the communist Pedro Castillo, who has held the presidency of the Andean country since July 2021.

For Rodríguez Mackay, Foreign Minister between July and September, the OAS has overstepped its bounds in its recent statement.

It also confirms the sending of a high-level commission to analyze the situation in Peru following the request of the Peruvian president himself.

“I believe that the OAS has just issued, even in the permanent council, a resolution which precisely gives rise to the creation of this high-level commission, but it says in its resolution that it supports and expresses solidarity with the democratically elected government of Peru, that is too much.

“Its purpose is, based on a request, to carry out an inspection. They are advancing (an opinion), and they cannot do that,” said Rodriguez Mackay in the program Todo Se Sabe of RPP Noticias.

“The OAS cannot qualify; it is not an object. If article 2 of the resolution says: ‘call all the concerned actors of the national society’, I understand that it includes the government.

“So if it calls the actors, why does it congratulate them? It cannot support it; this is important because it reflects the concern of the Peruvian government, but the OAS must have a neutral, eclectic, and weighted nature,” he added.

Finally, the former Foreign Minister pointed out that the OAS officials would come to the country to assist in Pedro Castillo’s administration, which requests it because it believed there was a risk to the country’s governability.

Still, they do not have a coercive quality.

OAS WILL SEND A DELEGATION

It should be recalled that the Permanent Council of the OAS unanimously decided to support “democratic institutionality and representative democracy in Peru,” resolving to send a “high-level” delegation to make an “analysis” of the political situation in the country.

“To designate a high-level group made up of representatives of the Member States, by the Inter-American Democratic Charter, to visit Peru to analyze the situation and report to this Council,” reads the resolution of the supranational organization.

CONGRESS SENDS LETTER TO THE OAS

On October 20, the Congress of the Republic sent a letter to the OAS expressing its willingness to dialogue to explain to the representatives of that organization the country’s real situation and the full respect for the Constitution.

The letter was signed by the head of the Peruvian Congress, José Williams Zapata, and sent to Jan Marten Willem Schalkwijk, head of the Permanent Council of the Organization of American States (OAS).

In the document, Williams expresses the broadest disposition of the Congress to hold a dialogue with the eventual mission that this council sends to Peru, which must also hold interviews with representatives of other powers of the Peruvian State.

He adds that it should also meet with constitutionally autonomous organizations, leaders of political parties, press media, and civil society groups to have a complete picture of the crisis Peru is going through and to corroborate that it is acting within the constitutional framework and to gather information on the evidence that supports the accusations against President Pedro Castillo.

In the missive, it is also reminded that the mechanisms contemplated in the Inter-American Democratic Charter will only be activated when there are situations that put at risk the democratic institutional political process of a member state or when its legitimate exercise of power is affected by a violation of the constitutional order.

“This is not happening in Peru. The actions of the Congress of the Republic of Peru and the various institutions mentioned in the letter presented by the Peruvian government do not fit into this scenario,” the document adds.

With information from Gaceta