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OAS TO SUPPORT LEGISLATIVE STRENGTHENING IN SEVERAL COUNTRIES

The Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), José Miguel Insulza, today noted the importance of strengthening legislative integration among countries and of “providing parliaments with political and technical capacity to confront the great challenges of modern legislation.”

Insulza spoke at the signing ceremony of a Memorandum of Understanding between the OAS and the Forum of Presidents of the Legislative Bodies of Central America and the Caribbean Basin (Foro de Presidentes de Poderes Legislativos de Centroamérica y la Cuenca del Caribe, FOPREL), an entity that comprises Belize, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama. “The two objectives that we have focused on in this agreement are of great relevance for FOPREL and for the OAS, because they have to do with integration and good governance,” Insulza said.

The agreement establishes a framework for cooperation that the OAS will provide to FOPREL to support the work of its Inter-Parliamentary Committees and the Central American and Caribbean Basin Institute for Legislative Studies (ICEL), through research and analysis of countries’ comparative legislation. FOPREL President Julio César Valentín Jiminián, who also chairs the House of Representatives of the Dominican Republic, signed the agreement on behalf of the legislative organization.

Insulza noted that the interaction among the countries of this subregion requires a level of legislative integration “that on one hand harmonizes and on the other complements the states’ legislation, as is appropriate when moving toward real integration, not simply trade but more broadly in the political, economic and social arenas.”

Reaffirming that good governance and the balance of powers are a priority under the Inter-American Democratic Charter, Insulza said that Latin American nations, in particular, tend to have an imbalance between the executive and legislative branches. Many times, he said, bills are drafted by the executive branch and sent to the legislative body, which does not necessarily have the technical tools at its disposal to analyze the issues in depth.

For his part, Valentín Jiminián said that legislative bodies, as representatives of the people, should work in parallel to the executive power. “We understand that we should direct our efforts and faithfully meet the responsibilities assigned to us by the democratic process and our constitutions. It is extremely important for us in the subregion to harmonize our legislation; we should unify criteria, unify regulations, in a way that our countries can grow and develop stronger institutions,” he said.

The FOPREL President emphasized education as a central issue to reach higher levels of development. He announced that this year a major event of legislative bodies will be held in Belize—which chairs both the Central American Integration System and the Inter-parliamentary Committee on Education—so that the legislative branches “can draft some type of proposal that would allow us to address and attack at the source the problem of illiteracy in Central America, the Caribbean and the Dominican Republic, and to try to develop a pragmatic and inexpensive model can be applied throughout the Americas,” he concluded.

Reference: E-015/07