OAS regrets El Salvador’s break with commission against corruption

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Organization of American States (OAS) said today that it “deeply regrets” the rupture, by the government of El Salvador, of the agreement that governed the work of the International Commission against corruption in the country.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of El Salvador justified its decision on Friday in a statement by pointing out that “it is because the General Secretariat of the OAS hired as an advisor the former head of the Arena party Ernesto Muyshondt, judicially prosecuted since 2016 for various crimes.”

Last Friday, the government statement added that the commission was created “to fight corruption and impunity and not to promote them.”

The OAS General Secretariat responded Monday that Muyshondt was not hired, as the Salvadoran government communiqué says, “but only an offer was made to him at the time for an honorary contract, although this contract was never signed.” “Before making the offer public, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was notified about it and at no time made known any discrepancy with respect to the possibility of carrying it out,” he added.

“We completely reject the argumentation formulated, and we consider it our duty to make public our differences with the Government of El Salvador regarding the CICIES,” the OAS secretariat said.

The organization made up of 35 countries of the Americas and the Caribbean, affirmed that its disagreements with the government of El Salvador over the tasks of the International Commission against Impunity in El Salvador (CICIES) make “the continuation of the commission’s work impossible.”

“The current Government of El Salvador knows that the General Secretariat of the OAS had always assumed the essential principles of Inter-American Law and the Inter-American System, even when it was in many cases alone in defense of these principles, the communiqué continues.

“Likewise, it can rest assured that it will continue to assume them, regardless of the certain political costs that this will have,” it concluded.