Pejman Yousefzadeh

If your name is Guillermo Cochez, you get sacked:

This week, after three and a half years of diplomatic service in Washington, D.C., Ambassador Guillermo Cochez (pictured on the right) left his post as Panama’s permanent representative to the Organization of American States (OAS). He was dismissed from his job by President Ricardo Martinelli for critical statements he made about the indefinite postponement of President Chávez’s inauguration in Venezuela. Cochez’s departure is a loss for the OAS. His voice will be sorely missed by those suffering under Latin American governments that have systematically eroded democracy and human rights.

Promoting democratic values and safeguarding human rights are supposed to be two of the pre-eminent goals of the OAS. They’re explicitly defined as such in Article 2 of the OAS Charter as well as Articles 3, 4, and 7 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Over the years, of course, both right-wing and left-wing dictators have done their best to subvert OAS monitoring mechanisms. While the conservative caudillos have faded away with time and the Cuban dictatorship has not been a member since 1962, a more recent group of leftist “soft authoritarians” such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega has been pushing to water down respect for human rights among the 34 members of the OAS.

Yet along the way, Cochez — a Panamanian Christian Democrat with a 40-year career who first made his name opposing the military dictatorship in his home country — has stood out as one of the few diplomats who has been unafraid to take seriously the OAS mandate to safeguard democratic freedoms throughout Latin America.

Promoting democratic values and safeguarding human rights are supposed to be two of the pre-eminent goals of the OAS. They’re explicitly defined as such in Article 2 of the OAS Charter as well as Articles 3, 4, and 7 of the Inter-American Democratic Charter. Over the years, of course, both right-wing and left-wing dictators have done their best to subvert OAS monitoring mechanisms. While the conservative caudillos have faded away with time and the Cuban dictatorship has not been a member since 1962, a more recent group of leftist “soft authoritarians” such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, Ecuador’s Rafael Correa, Bolivia’s Evo Morales and Nicaragua’s Daniel Ortega has been pushing to water down respect for human rights among the 34 members of the OAS.

Yet along the way, Cochez — a Panamanian Christian Democrat with a 40-year career who first made his name opposing the military dictatorship in his home country — has stood out as one of the few diplomats who has been unafraid to take seriously the OAS mandate to safeguard democratic freedoms throughout Latin America.

Read the whole thing. The story makes clear that Cochez was entirely willing to challenge the abuses of Latin American autocrats. Those autocrats—and their enablers—are the only ones who will gain by his firing.