opinion

Toxic for the people
of the Americas
by Carlos Guevara Mann

The installation of Aristides Royo as Secretary General of the OAS would be a mockery of the people of the Americas, whose tax dollars finance the functions of said organization, which was supposedly established with the purpose "to promote and consolidate representative democracy," according to Article 1 of the OAS Charter of 1948. Article 1 of the Democratic Charter of the Americas of 2001 recognizes, moreover, the right of the peoples of the Americas to democracy and the obligation of their governments to promote and defend this system of government.

Royo was one of the principal collaborators and agents of a bloody and corrupt dictatorship, whose usurpation of power constituted a permanent negation of the Panamanian people's rights to democracy, peace, freedom, social justice, development and sovereignty, which are consecrated in the OAS Charter and the Democratic Charter of the Americas.

In its Country Report on Panama, published on June 22, 1978, --- a few months before the October 11, 1978 imposition of Royo as "president" of the republic by the machinations of the dictator Omar Torrijos --- the Inter-American Human Rights Commission established that the military regime that Royo served "exercises its powers in a very arbitrary manner, which results in grave violations of fundamental human rights."

It would be enormous nonsense for the United States and Colombia, whose governments proclaim left and right their unrenounceable democratic commitment, to support the cloudy ambitions and designs of someone whose performance in public office is characterized by his support for an authoritarian, terrorist and venal regime.

The author is a political science professor at the University of Panama and has served as Panama's Director General of Foreign Policy