QCOSTARICA – Former president Miguel Ángel Rodríguez (1998 – 2002), asked President Carlos Alvarado to lead a call for Central American leaders to visit Joe Biden in Washington, in order to establish bilateral agreements through a “Great Central American Alliance”.
For Rodríguez, the convocation of leaders must be made through the Central American Integration System (SICA), that Costa Rica currently holds the Pro Tempore presidency.
“In this hour of enormous suffering, of anguish and uncertainty for the world and specifically for Central Americans, history once again summons Costa Ricans to lead fraternally to turn tears into satisfaction.
“To turn the cost of the pandemic into an opportunity to overcome it for all the Central American peoples,” Rodríguez said in the letter to Alvarado.
For what?
The former president explained that with a Great Alliance for Central America it will be possible to take advantage of new technologies and connect all the homes of the Isthmus with knowledge networks.
In addition, he hopes that this Alliance will allow the strengthening of the rule of law, respect for human rights and eradicate corruption.
In addition, decarbonize the Central American nations, generate interconnected clean energies, among other actions related to mitigating global warming.
“An Alliance with these characteristics with the support of the United States and Mexico and with the collaboration of Canada, the European Union and the United Kingdom (…) would attract investment, knowledge and innovation capable of eliminating unemployment and creating prosperity,” said Rodriguez.
In contrast, the benefits for the United States would be seen in favorable effects on disorderly immigration, global warming and the reactivation of the world economy, according to Rodríguez.
For the ex-president, if Alvarado assumes this leadership, he will not have opposition from the political, business, social and union sectors.
Casa Presidencial (Government House) has not confirmed the receiving of the letter, much less if the president has responded.
Miguel Ángel Rodríguez Echeverría is an economist, lawyer, businessman and politician, serving in public office from 1968. In 2004, he was elected Secretary-General of the Organization of American States (OAS), a month later voluntarily stepped down from this post to return to Costa Rica to face allegations of financial wrongdoing during his presidential tenure in Costa Rica.
On April 27 of 2011, he was sentenced to 5 years in prison, but the ruling was later reversed in a December 2012 decision by an appeals court, which found him innocent of all charges
