Career Diplomat, former Bolivian Ambassador to the United States
26 September 2021
Diplomatic fiasco at the CELAC Summit
States with a professional foreign service know that it is never wise to announce a foreign policy initiative whose chances of failure are far greater than those of success. In Bolivia, the opposite happens, both during the Government of Evo Morales and in the current one of Luis Arce, both enthusiastically embarked on all the ships with the possibility of sinking. It seems that it has become a custom of the foreign policy of the Movement Towards Socialism (MAS) to go for wool and get shorn.
It began with the failed maritime strategy designed by the Government of Evo Morales, to present a claim against Chile before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), under the strange premise that they would achieve a Judgment at The Hague that would force Chile to negotiate a sovereign outlet to the Pacific Ocean by virtue of unilateral commitments that Chile would have historically and unilaterally contracted with Bolivia. This maneuver, similar to buying a lottery ticket or betting on roulette, was publicized urbi et orbi (to the city and the world) and they thought that its success would secure Evo Morales into power until the end of time. The result was that Evo Morales will go down in history as the gravedigger of the maritime issue.
This tendency to disgrace the foreign policy continues with the current Government. They announce a series of international actions and all they obtain are embarrassing setbacks. They mount a political and media show to announce the presentation of the report of the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) regarding the events of violence that occurred in Bolivia between September and December 2019, until they find the unpleasant surprise that among the findings of the GIEI, there are also serious human rights violations attributable to Evo Morales and a recommendation that responsibilities should be established in all acts of violence that occurred during the last two governments. As if that was not enough, the GIEI adds that the Bolivian judicial system is not in a position to provide the minimum guarantees for a fair trial, of impartiality and of due process, due to structural problems and in particular of its consolidation and that «it verified its lack of independence from the Public Ministry, the abuse of preventive detention and its use for the purposes of political persecution.» For this reason, the silence and oblivion in which the GIEI’s recommendations have been confined is not surprising.
These failures would have led any sensible government to reflection, not the Bolivian one. A few weeks ago they invented another international strategy for domestic policy purposes: to go to the Permanent Council (PC) of the Organization of American States (OAS) to denounce the Secretary-General of the OAS, Luis Almagro, and the Secretariat for Strengthening Democracy (SSD) due to a public statement confirming that the Government of Evo Morales committed serious malicious manipulations in the presidential elections of October 2019, at all stages of the process. The failed attempt to attack the OAS was counterproductive for the Bolivian delegation made up of the Ministers of Justice and Foreign Affairs. Except for the support of Argentina, Mexico, and the Nicaraguan dictatorship, the rest of the countries praised the OAS Electoral Observation Missions (EOMs) for the excellent role they play in the region in defense of democracy. As if that was not enough, Francisco Guerrero, Secretary of the SSD, recited the rosary of malicious manipulations committed throughout that election, each of them verified and documented by the electoral forensic experts who went to Bolivia to carry out the binding audit of the OAS and solidly dismissed the little or no value of the report by the lonely professor at the University of Salamanca and two of his students, who for some time made the wise decision to disappear from the map.
Finally, as it seems that the current authorities do not learn by the experience of their continuous disasters and that, to add insult to injury, they lack career diplomats since at the beginning of their government they decimated the Diplomatic Career, they dedicated themselves to announce to everyone that at the Summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) in Mexico, they would present a joint initiative with Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Mexico, to replace the OAS with another organization and thus end Luis Almagro. As expected, they were again ridiculed and none of that happened. Rather, the OAS came out strengthened in the face of an incoherent organization such as the CELAC, which claims to be a defender of democracy and invites the dictatorships of Diaz Canel, Ortega, and Maduro to its Summit and the candidate to be admitted to that club, Evo Morales’ scribe, Luis Arce.
These constant failures damage the country’s already precarious image and its ability to act in good faith in its relations with the world.
Source: https://publico.bo/internacional/fiasco-diplomatico-en-cumbre-de-celac/
