MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Cristina Fernandez calls for regional litigation mechanisms and blasts international bodies as ‘predators’

The Argentine president and her Ecuadorean peer, both fond of clamping on the media (Photo: Afp)

Argentine President Cristina Fernandez criticized international organizations which she described as ‘predators’ and called for the region to create its own mechanisms to settle litigations among South American countries.

“We are in need and urgently, to create alternative mechanisms to existing multilateral organizations not because of ideological or political reasons, but for an eminently practical reason. Those multilateral bodies, those mechanisms to solve conflicts have given abundant evidence of acting as predators of our countries and fundamentally at the time of solving conflicts, including international ones and in their jurisdictions have shown to be unviable” said Cristina Fernandez during a ceremony on Tuesday at Government House to honour visiting Ecuadorean president Rafael Correa.

“The time has come to generate our own spaces and different instruments in our region, which in the framework of our legal systems and their own norms can ensure Latinamerica that all this decade won in inclusion, progress, improvements is not thrown overboard”, insisted the Argentine leader.

She then referred to the lack of resolution from the central countries in facing the crisis, which because they can’t solve them inevitably lands on our shores so we must double efforts and create our own alternative instruments”.

Cristina Fernandez insisted that “the paradigms we were told we should follow have collapsed” and they have shown to be “unfair and inefficient with developing countries”.

However the Argentine president also underlined that currently Latin American countries find themselves in a “better position than ever” and that the region cannot “miss this historic opportunity.”

Earlier in the day the Argentine president met privately with her Ecuadorean peer Correa who is visiting the country to receive the “Rodolfo Walsh” prize from La Plata University.

The prize will be given by the Journalism and Communication Faculty in the Latin American President for Popular Communication category. In previous years, the prize has been awarded to Bolivian president Evo Morales, and Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez.

La Plata University is where President Cristina Fernandez obtained her law degree and the Journalism and Communications Faculty is involved in what is known in Argentina as ‘militant’ journalism which means aligned with the prevailing political and social ideas of the moment and speared in this case by the administration of the former graduate.

President Correa has managed to impose in Ecuador one of the strictest and most severe libel legislation including harsh punishments and huge fines that threaten the existence of media and have forced several journalists to seek political asylum.