The Propsect. Un extrait de l'article qui vous permettra de comprendre pourquoi Léon Charles et Almagro sont copains comme cochons.

Publié par siel sur 7 Avril 2023, 17:11pm

Catégories : #NUESTRA AMERICA, #PEUPLE sans mémoire...

"THE ETHICAL IMPROPRIETIES ARE only a small part of how Almagro’s critics characterize him. As OAS chief, he has used his post to hire people aligned with the U.S. agenda for the region, according to multiple experts familiar with his staffing choices, and has made the OAS a refuge for members of political parties that are out of power.

Almagro’s secretary for strengthening democracy, Francisco Guerrero, has spent his career supporting Mexico’s center-right PRI party. Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro’s deputy chief of staff, Luis Fernando Lima Oliveira, is OAS secretary for multidimensional security, a role that involves oversight of illegal mining, deforestation, and land grabs.

Francesca Emanuele, an expert on Latin American politics who is writing a dissertation on the OAS at American University, said Almagro has a track record of pulling strings for friends.

She pointed to his appointment of former President of Ecuador Lenín Moreno as commissioner for disability affairs. Moreno was charged with bribery earlier this month over his role in granting a contract for a Chinese-built hydroelectric plant. He remains in Paraguay, despite Ecuadorian prosecutors’ request that he be placed in pretrial detention. Emanuele said the former president’s appointment at OAS is widely seen as an attempt to help him evade justice.

Critics also cited close ties between Almagro and the former president of Honduras Juan Orlando Hernández, who now sits in jail in New York awaiting trial on drug trafficking and weapons charges. In 2016, Almagro created an anti-corruption mission, MACCIH, at the request of the Honduran government. In 2018, the program’s top officials resigned, saying they had been prevented from carrying out their work, while accusing Almagro of having an “impunity pact” with Hernandez.

“It was a whitewash commission,” Emanuele said, which Almagro created “as a sham to tell Hondurans that the president was committed to the fight against corruption.”

In 2019, after widespread reports of abuses by security forces in Chile during popular protests, ranging from police torture to sexual violence, Almagro praised Chile’s president, saying he had “efficiently defended public order.”

“You would expect the secretary general, regardless of his politics, to play a more mediating role,” said Guillaume Long, Ecuador’s former minister of foreign affairs.

Almagro has taken a particularly hard line on Cuba and Venezuela, at one point echoing Trump’s threat to use military force to remove Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.

His support for the hard right came as a surprise to observers, since he was previously foreign minister in a left-wing government in Uruguay. But several experts on the OAS said he is more opportunist than ideologue.

“What he did in Bolivia was really a crime of opportunity,” said Mark Weisbrot, co-director of the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, which has led an effort to debunk the OAS reports on Morales’s election. Trump and Rubio wanted Morales out, Weisbrot said, and Almagro wanted a second term."

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Lawmakers Call for Investigation Into Embattled OAS Boss

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https://prospect.org/world/2023-04-05-lawmakers-investigation-oas-boss-almagro/