Rodriguez took over OAS like a ‘whirlwind’

The Organization of American States, whose headquarters is in Washington, is not an institution normally associated with rapid change.

Created 30 years ago to promote peace and security in the hemisphere, it has a reputation for slow and deliberate action — too slow, in the view of critics. So when its new secretary-general, former Costa Rican President Miguel Angel Rodriguez, 64, offered a reconstruction plan the moment he assumed office on Sept. 24, there was consternation among the staff representing the 35 member states in South and Central America and the Caribbean.

Faced with an organization that was cumbersome and broke, Mr. Rodriguez proposed a reduction to seven main departments, including one each dealing with political affairs, human rights and security.

“The department heads would function very much like a board of directors in a corporation with Rodriguez himself as chairman of the board,” said an OAS insider. Another pointed out that Mr. Rodriguez had been in the private sector, and that his restructuring was “an almost classic Harvard Business School model.”

In the process, the new secretary-general fired most of the organization’s high-powered political appointees as a cost-cutting measure.

The OAS faces serious financial difficulties because its budget of $76 million in prorated contributions from member states — with the United States as the main contributor — has not changed since 1997, while real costs have soared.

Mr. Rodriguez had campaigned aggressively to win election to the five-year top post.

A decade ago, another Costa Rican candidate had seemed a shoo-in for the job, but was beaten by a late arrival when the majority of the OAS council switched its preference. Mr. Rodriguez was determined that the same thing would not happen in his case.

“When he won, he came in like a whirlwind, but some of the changes were necessary,” said the insider.

The whirlwind abruptly subsided when, two weeks after taking over, Mr. Rodriguez announced his resignation over an influence-peddling scandal in Costa Rica involving a foreign cellular-telephone contract. In his letter of resignation, he said he wanted to spare the OAS “a cruel and long persecution of its secretary-general.” Apologizing for the crisis, he said: “With humility, pain and anguish, I ask you and your countries for forgiveness for making you endure this difficult period.”

Reports of the ex-president’s reputed wrongdoing began to surface in the Costa Rican press a week after he took office in Washington. On Oct. 8, the attorney general in Costa Rica issued an international order for his arrest, and Mr. Rodriguez announced his resignation.

He was put under house arrest in San Jose on Saturday for six months pending an investigation of the charges against him. A day earlier, he entered a clinic in the Costa Rican capital suffering from high blood pressure after police interrogation.

According to various versions of the story, Mr. Rodriguez is said to have asked a close associate, Jose Lobo, for 60 percent of $2 million reputedly paid to Mr. Lobo by Alcatel, the French telecommunications company, for helping it close a deal with the state Telecommunications and Power Institution.

Mr. Rodriguez says the money was a loan to finance his campaign for the top OAS post.

OAS sources say the scandal is a severe blow to its prestige as well as to that of Costa Rica, which has a reputation, rare in Latin America, of having honest and hardworking politicians and officials — hence its description as “the Switzerland of South America.”

The U.S. representative to the OAS and its deputy secretary, Luigi R. Einaudi, a scholar and retired American ambassador, took over Friday as acting secretary, and is expected to retain that post until June, when the OAS general assembly meets.

But pressure is building from other member states to choose a successor. Chilean Interior Minister Jose Insulza has been mentioned as one candidate with considerable support, including that of Brazil and Argentina. Another is the foreign minister of Uruguay, Didier Opertti.

What puzzles some observers is why the impending legal action failed to surface in the weeks when Mr. Rodriguez was making his bid for the OAS leadership, a campaign that was highly publicized by Latin American press.

“Of course it’s possible that the information was sent to Washington and nobody looked at it,” one Latin American diplomat said.