MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

OAS targets Latinamerica's “lack of governance”

Strengthening democratic institutions and confronting the “exacerbated lack of governance” in Latinamerica are the main priorities of the Organization of American States, OAS.

Jose Miguel Insulza, OAS Secretary General defined the priorities during an academic encounter with social and political science experts in Santiago which addressed "Chile's foreign affairs forums 2006/2010".

The quality problems of Latinamerican democracy can be explained among other things because of "the institutional insufficiencies in the region's countries", which have been incapable of delivering the social demands and economic expectations from the beginning of the nineties.

Mr. Insulza underlined that most political crisis in the region occur "in the poorest countries".

"Establishing targets and objective accomplishments in social and economic fields by these countries are therefore another of OAS priorities to closely monitor", indicated Mr. Insulza

More specifically talking about Haiti, Mr. Insulza admitted that "there have been discrepancies over the role played by OAS" and "we don't have a common position, mainly because of the attitude adopted by other Caribbean countries".

However with time they have been participating and helping in the coordination of the coming elections, particularly with voters' registration which has jumped from 67.000 to over two million.

Mr. Insulza said he favoured keeping United Nations military presence in Haiti since for the international intervention to achieve its goals it must guarantee the functioning of democratic institutions.