President Alberto Fernández said he wanted consensus without leaving anyone out.
This Friday, the president of Argentina, Alberto Fernández, assumed the presidency for the time being of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), and advocated that integration and the search for consensus be promoted, as well as respect for diversity and “without exclusions.”
“I am immensely honored by the trust you have placed in Argentina by entrusting you with the presidency for the time being de la Celac ”, the president began when he participated in the meeting in Buenos Aires, in which The foreign ministers of the group’s countries chose Argentina by consensus to lead the bloc in 2022.
As Fernández pointed out, this “trust” is “a recognition that Argentina is capable of articulating dialogues, consensus” and at the same time as “a mandate to give the institutionality to Celac.”
“I take up this challenge with the conviction of those who believe that we are all part of a great country that unites us, although many do the impossible to divide us and consequently submit us easily,” he stated.
This election comes after months of intense talks with the member countries by the Government of Argentina, the only candidate to lead the body, after last September’s summit of presidents failed to achieve the necessary consensus.
The Celac, created in 2010 and made up of some thirty countries, experienced in 2020 how Brazil decided to disassociate itself, considering that the organization supports “non-democratic regimes”, such as those of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua.
Among those attending this Friday’s meeting are the foreign ministers of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua, countries questioned by the United States and the Organization of American States (OAS) for alleged human rights violations.
Without referring to that issue, the Argentine president remarked that “Celac was not born to oppose someone” or to confront “any of the existing institutions” or “to interfere in the political and economic life of any country.”
“Celac was born as a forum in favor of ourselves, which always promoted consensus and plurality in a framework of democratic coexistence without any type of exclusions,” he said.
In his speech, Fernández lamented that when the pandemic appeared, Latin America was already the most unequal continent in the world, the one with the largest income gap between rich and poor, differences that he considered “have deepened” with the pandemic.
“With so much inequality, democracy seems empty of content and freedom is enjoyed more by those who have access to social centrality than by those who live on the margins of societies,” he added.
Before the ministers present, Fernández emphasized that Mexico, which held the presidency until today for the time being Since January 2020, it has been carried out “under conditions of extreme difficulty due to the pandemic and the crisis”, despite what it managed to “revitalize” a Celac that in its opinion is today “more alive and strengthened than ever”.
Regarding the program that Argentina will carry out, the president proposed working on fifteen objectives, although he called for them not to be the only ones, among them related to health strategies, economic recovery, risk management in disaster situations and food security .
But also aerospace cooperation and science and technology applied to social innovation, the issue of climate change and the discussion of strategies that make it possible to agree on positions before international and regional financial organizations.
In this sense, Fernández thanked the support that Argentina has received from the foreign ministers in the negotiation that the country is carrying out with the International Monetary Fund, to refinance the debt it has with the organization for more than 40,000 million dollars.
He also thanked Argentina for its support in the historic confrontation with the United Kingdom over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands.
“There are no limits to integration, the search for consensus will be our primary mandate, and respect for diversity our guiding guide,” he concluded. (I)
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