MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Coordinators meeting in Montevideo will find “a definitive solution” to Mercosur acephaly

The four founding countries of Mercosur must concentrate in the implementation of “a temporary administration” of the presidency, anticipated Loizaga

Paraguay's foreign minister Eladio Loizaga anticipated that the Mercosur coordinators meeting scheduled to take place this Tuesday in Montevideo, will be “definitive” since a proposal to solve the current “acephaly” of the block's presidency which was self proclaimed by Venezuela and questioned by other members, “will emerge”.

 ”The Mercosur presidency is not being exercised by Venezuela, it's vacant and there is an impasse and an acephaly which we have to fill. How will be proposed by the coordinators meeting tomorrow (Tuesday)“, the Paraguayan minister told the Asunción media.

The four founding countries of Mercosur must concentrate in the implementation of ”a temporary administration“ of the presidency, although Loizaga did not advance further details of how it would work out.

Loizaga also mentioned that the Tuesday meeting of coordinators from Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay, has also invited their Venezuelan peer, ”so there's no kind or discrimination or exclusion“.

Another issue to be addressed at the Montevideo meeting is the current compliance by Venezuela of its obligations as part of the definitive process of full membership of Mercosur.

Last week Paraguay requested its founding peers of the block a ”juridical review“ of Venezuela's protocol of membership application, since it surfaced that the Caracas government has not complied with many of its administrative, political and human rights obligations as demanded by the block, according to the Paraguayan ministry.

Paraguay together with Brazil and Argentina is one of the countries which most strongly opposes the Mercosur six-month rotating presidency for Venezuela, which until the end of July was in the hands of Uruguay, and according to alphabetical order procedure was to be handed to Venezuela.

Last 29 July and contrary to the opinion of its founding partners, Uruguay announced it was devolving the presidency since its six month mandate was over, and added that it did not see and ”juridical impediment“ for Venezuela to take the presidency.

However this was questioned by the other members given Venezuela's non compliance with many of its obligations dating back to 2012 when it was admitted as full member to Mercosur. Argentina also underlined that any transfer of the presidency must be done in the framework of a meeting of the Common Market Council, plus a presentation of the last six-month activity by the outgoing member, which did not happen since Venezuela simply decided to self proclaim the presidency.

The three countries also question the democratic credentials of the current Venezuelan administration of president Nicolas Maduro.

The fact is that despite the majority opinion of member countries, Venezuela is exercising the Mercosur presidency actively and last week foreign minister Delcy Rodríguez traveled to India to advance the free trade agreement which was sealed several years ago between Mercosur and New Delhi.

Mercosur is in the midst of a major political situation, probably the worst since its founding in 1991, and similar to that of 2012 when following Senate impeachment, Paraguayan president Fernando Lugo was removed from office. The other members then suspended Paraguay, and took advantage of the situation to admit Venezuela's incorporation protocol as full member.

From Brazil, foreign minister Jose Serra last week said plainly that ”Venezuela has become an authoritarian non democratic regime; a country which holds political prisoners can't be considered democratic“

Serra underlined that ”Venezuela will not be occupying the Mercosur presidency, you can be sure of that“.

Meanwhile president Maduro called the three countries, Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay, ”the triple alliance of South American torturers“ and claimed the interim presidency in Brazil was ”an imposed dictatorship“; Mauricio Macri a failed president and Paraguay's Horacio Cartes head of a ”corrupt, drug lords oligarchy”.