The foreign ministers of Central America reached a consensus to elect Nicaraguan Werner Vargas Torres as the new secretary general of the General Secretariat of the Central American Integration System (SICA), putting an end to the year-long impasse caused by the repeated attempts of the Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo regime to place political chips without regional diplomatic experience in their place.
The consensus on the candidacy of Werner Vargas Torres was reached in a virtual meeting of the Central American foreign ministers, in which the situation of the impasse in SICA was addressed. A statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Costa Rica reported that during the virtual meeting of foreign ministers, it was agreed to support the candidacy of Werner Vargas Torres and that it only remained for it to be endorsed by the presidents grouped in SICA.
“Costa Rica joined the consensus reached at the meeting of the Council of Ministers to raise the list to the meeting of presidents and recommend Mr. Werner Vargas, former executive director of SICA, to be elected Secretary General of SICA. Said list and recommendation will be sent for consideration by the meeting of presidents, which is responsible for electing the secretary general, as established by the Tegucigalpa Protocol. With this decision, progress is made in the process of regularizing the operation of SICA and with it, the reactivation of international cooperation with the region,” the statement quotes.
Werner Vargas Torres was executive director of the General Secretariat of SICA when its head was former Guatemalan president Vinicio Cerezo (2014-2020). The former executive director of the regional organization was the candidate with the best technical profile to assume ownership of it, for which he had the support of the Central American countries.
His candidacy was the fourth proposal made by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to occupy the position, in correspondence with the rotation agreed by the Central American countries that established that Nicaragua was responsible for assuming the general secretary of SICA for the period 2021- 2025.
According to your professional profile on LinkedIn, has held positions as Secretary of Parliamentary Affairs in the Central American Parliament; director for European Union issues, and head of office at the Nicaraguan Foreign Ministry between 2008 and 2010. He was also a legal collaborator of the Central American Court of Justice (ICJ) between 2010 and 2014, a position he left to occupy the executive direction of SICA .
Werner Vargas left the position of executive director due to differences with the Cerezo chief of staff, but he is highly appreciated in the different instances linked to regional integration.
Photo: Confidential | Taken from Twitter.
This coming June 29, SICA will complete a year without having a general secretary due to the ‘impasse’ caused by Ortega, an unprecedented event in the 30-year history of the regional organization.
First, the regime proposed that the last secretary general, former president Cerezoaccused of sympathizing with Ortega, remained in office, but the proposal was rejected by Belize.
Subsequently, the regime proposed a triple headed by former Sandinista guerrilla Orlando José Tardencilla, who had a fleeting step as representative of Nicaragua before the OAS; the architect Luz Marina López Escobar, architect and technical coordinator of the Infrastructure Secretariat of the Autonomous Regional Government of the North Caribbean Coast of Nicaragua, and María Amelia Coronel Kinloch, who since 2017 has served as head of the Ministry of the Interior (Migob).
However, this shortlist was rejected because it was made up of “people without much knowledge” in the foreign service, and “very close to the regime,” according to the reactions of the member countries.
The third attempt of the regime was Orlando Solórzano, former head of the Ministry of Development, Industry and Commerce (Mific), but later, for undisclosed reasons, he lost the approval of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo as a candidate.
