El Salvador presents Flores as OAS candidate

January 14, 2005 El Salvador officially presented ex-president Francisco Flores as its official candidate for the post of Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS). The previous Secretary General, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, vacated the post after serving only 24 days of his term of office before returning home to Costa Rica to face corruption charges.

The Salvadoran government claims already to have the support of three other Central-American countries and the Dominican Republic for their candidate. This may not be true, however, because Guatemala is still deciding whether to officially nominate Nobel Laureate Rigoberta Menchú as an alternative candidate. It is certain that Honduras is refusing to support Flores because of his refusal to accept the decision of the International Court of Justice in favour of Honduras over a territorial dispute between the two nations when he was president.

Flores has criticised Mexico for proposing Luis Ernesto Derbez as a candidate, claiming that in the previous election Mexico had agreed, as had all the OAS nations, that the chosen candidate should be from Central America, and that they have gone back on their word by now proposing their own candidate.

Honduras has similarly criticised Flores, saying that Central America had previously decided to back a consensus candidate, something that Flores is not.