Hypocrisy in the executive branch club
Three presidents condemned the the judicial case against Kirchner while remaining silent about Ortega's abuses.
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Luis Arce and Gustavo Petro signed a letter claiming Argentina’s Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner is the victim of “an unjustifiable judicial persecution.” Nicolas Maduro added his support to the list earlier this week.
Meanwhile Mexico and Bolivia (along with El Salvador and Honduras) formally abstained from a recent resolution at the OAS condemning Daniel Ortega’s persecution of civil society in Nicaragua. Colombia’s representative was purposefully absent from the debate. The countries viewed the resolution condemning Ortega and his government as interfering too much in the domestic affairs of the country.
It’s obvious hypocrisy and the presidents who signed the letter defending Kirchner while refusing to condemn Ortega are being called out by critics in each of their countries. The fact they were willing to sign the letter condemning a judicial action in Argentina shows all the talk about non-interference in domestic affairs is garbage, a useful smokescreen to be used when it’s politically convenient. That they dodged the resolution on Ortega, who has shut down hundreds of NGOs and is currently arresting Catholic priests who are speaking out about human rights abuses, is shameful.
For AMLO and Arce, it doesn’t matter much. Politics in both countries is very much focused on domestic issues and the political coalitions are organized in a way that they won’t lose any support for domestic priorities in their Congresses or among the voting populations.
Petro faces a different domestic situation. Just weeks into his new administration, he is trying to keep together a broad coalition of parties in order to get his domestic agenda passed. Any early missteps could peel Congressional votes away or make it harder to negotiate on the domestic front. And foreign affairs matter more in Colombia than the other countries given the attention to Petro’s recent re-establishment of relations with the Maduro regime in Venezuela. An unwillingness to condemn Ortega, which should be politically easy, while defending Kirchner, something that wasn’t necessary, raises clear parallel questions as to how Petro will handle Maduro and the awful human rights situation in Venezuela.
Going beyond the left side of the ideological spectrum, the other point to take away from this diplomatic dance is how executive branches defend each other in the hemisphere and want to be protected from criticism, both internal and external. Presidents don’t like to see activist legislatures and judiciaries checking the power of their counterparts because they can imagine themselves in the same situation. The presidents defending Kirchner while ignoring Ortega are hoping the favor will be returned some day when criticism comes to them.