Statement by Ambassador Henry L. Illes, Permanent Representative of the Republic of Suriname to the Organization of American States, on the Occasion of the 34th General Assembly of the OAS

Ecuador, Quito
6-8 June 2004

Mr. Chairman,
It gives me great pleasure to address this Thirty-Fourth General Assembly of the OAS on behalf of H.E. Marie Levens, who cannot be here, because she is still recuperating from surgery she underwent last week. I would like to express my sincere thanks to the Government and People of Ecuador for their warm hospitality, and the excellent arrangements that have been made for this annual event.

Mr. Chairman,
The recent flood crisis in our sister states Haiti and the Dominican Republic once again proves our region’s vulnerability to natural disasters and the urgent need to look for safety mechanisms in this area. I would like to express deepest condolences and sympathy on behalf of the Government and people of the Republic of Suriname to the Government and people of both Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

Corruption has been identified as one of the most serious failures of contemporary democratic governance. Even the most mature democracies, such as many in the Caribbean and North America, have had and are still experiencing periods of serious political dissatisfaction and lack of trust in public and private institutions.

The hallmark of these mature democracies is that this dissatisfaction rarely gets translated into support for fundamentally illiberal political options. In general, almost all of the members of the OAS demonstrate and cherish pretty strong support for core democratic values and principles such as those enshrined in our well-known “Democratic Handbook”, namely the Inter American Charter on Democracy.

Yet, there is an unfortunate disconcerting reality that the average citizen is dissatisfied with the political status quo, and this level of popular dissatisfaction ought to raise serious concern, as is clearly expressed in the official theme of this General Assembly and at the recent Monterrey Summit, where our Heads noticeably stated that: “Corruption undermines core democratic values, challenges political stability and economic growth and thus threatens vital interests in our hemisphere”.

Hemispheric countries therefore must make an all-out effort to tackle the issue of corruption in their societies, especially when corruption influences public policy in structural terms. It is critical to reduce and then eliminate the legal and political impunity that corruption enjoys in many societies.

In order to tackle the scourge of corruption, each individual country first needs to act at the national level. Suriname therefore ratified the Inter-American Convention against Corruption at the General Assembly of the OAS, which was held in Barbados in 2002.

This action was just one of the various important multilateral steps in the ongoing struggle to limit the practice of corruption in my country as well as in the rest of the hemisphere. We are currently in the process of establishing effective measures and actions to prevent, detect, punish and minimize corruption in the performance of public functions as was strongly mandated by the Santiago de Chile Summits and reaffirmed by the Quebec and Monterrey Summits.

Mr. Chairman,
In the very near future we will all be united in one integrated hemispheric marketplace.
What will be the dimension of corruption in this marketplace if we have different definitions for this phenomenon?
What will be the effect of this integration on the employment in the various national sectors?

Mr. Chairman,
We can no longer stand idly by while the evil of corruption impedes the (long-term) development of our societies. The problem of corruption, which is not only an economic problem, but also a social and moral one, causes loss of credibility from both our own citizens and the international community in our Governments and private institutions. Corruption should therefore be dealt with at the national, regional, and international level. It is, thus, critical that we continue our collective efforts to free our Hemisphere of this evil.

Thank you!

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