Talk:2005 Organization of American States Secretary General election

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Elections and Referendums

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Current tally

(moved from Talk:Secretary General of the Organization of American States)

Are you sure? It contradicts much of what is said about the candidates' support in the paragraphs immediately above. Do you have a single source for those figures, or is it a compilation? –Hajor 02:13, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[1] [2] [3] [4] —Cantus…☎ 03:30, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Paraguay and Peru will probably vote Bolivia's way, and Colombia (as the US) for Flores. I hope I'm wrong :) —Cantus…☎ 03:51, Apr 7, 2005 (UTC)

Your most recent changes have addressed most of my concerns; I'm still a bit worried about listing Panama and SK&N under Insulza, precisely because they (and Peru) are where the (first round) battle is going to be fought. If Insulza doesn't get 18 on the first attempt, the 2nd round between him and Derbez is when it'll get interesting. The Mexican press is already discussing replacements for Derbez. Do they announce how the individual votes were cast, or is it a secret ballot? –Hajor 04:24, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Breaking the deadlock

Obvious solution: readmit Cuba. Deciding vote; problem solved. –Hajor 20:25, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cuba would have probably abstain. —Cantus…☎ 21:06, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Cuba could have made all the difference in the choice. But the United States pushed to perminantly banned Cuba from the OAS since 1962.Caricom Backing Sure For Chile's Man As OAS Head.

Cuba would more then likely vote for whomever Venezuela votes. CaribDigita 01:04, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Or for whomever the US does not vote. —Cantus…☎ 03:30, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Highlights on the listing

Hmm... how about dividing them all up into blocs: Caricom; Andean Comm'ty and Mercosur (or combine as SACN?); NAFTA; Central American Parliament / Common Market. Overlaps? Guyana & Suriname are more Caricom than SACN. Any others? –Hajor 21:52, 11 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I'm worried about the possible 'overlaps.' CARICOM members are interesting because they're small and numerous, and they can change an election with their support. —Cantus…☎ 23:08, Apr 11, 2005 (UTC)

Breakdown:

NAFTA (3): ca, us, mx
Spanish-speaking Central America and the Caribbean (7): gt, hn, sv, ni, cr, pa, do (optionally, explain in a footnote that Panama's in the Parlacen, but not in CAFTA; Costa Rica is in the FTA but not the parliament.)
SACN (12-2=10): bo, co, ec, pe, ve, ar, br, py, uy, cl -- add a footnote explaining about Guyana and Suriname not immediately joining and instead being listed under:
Caricom (14): Antigua and Barbuda / Bahamas / Barbados / Belize / Dominica / Grenada / Guyana / Haiti / Jamaica / Saint Kitts and Nevis / Saint Lucia / Suriname / Saint Vincent and the Grenadines / Trinidad and Tobago

Total = 3+7+10+14=34. Did I count anyone twice?

I think that works. I was just worried about singling out the Caricoms for highlighting, NPOV and all that. –Hajor 00:20, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

CARICOM is a special bloc. CARICOM although they wont admit it are heading towards a Political Union. CARICOM is probably the only--- trade bloc in the OAS that allows their Ministers of Foreign Affairs or Heads of State from any of the member states to handle issues for one another.

Example. Canada, the USA and Mexico are in NAFTA. When was the last time the United States allowed Canada to go craft a new deal with Mexico on the US' behalf? CARICOM states do this for one-another from time to time. And they've agreed that many larger states use the divide-and-conquor method on them, so from now on they'll have a unified foreign policy.(CARICOM & Bush aren't on good terms.) [5]

I wouldn't be affraid of CARICOM's-- votes. Brazil and Venezuela have said its time to actually consolidate CARICOM into a single bloc with South America. That's why Guyana and Suriname went ahead and joined SACN right now. They will be first to bridge the two trade blocs. Cuba is going to integrate into the Mercosur, because 'democracy' puts Cuba in breach of the CARICOM charter.

As the plan goes. Venezuela gets to be incharge of the Latin America-Caribbean-OPEC oil company they want to form(That's their little pet project.). Brazil gets their "road network" deal where they become the central road network of South America. "Guyana" gets to be the gateway between North/South America according to plan. And if these blocs converge their votes and foreign policy, then that is when you'll really see something begin.

P.S. Belize is in something else besides CARICOM too, I think it's called "SICE"(?) which is why they told Mexico they would back them first. None the less, Latin America isn't as organized to the point of deciding not to compete against one another. You have Mexico originally competing against El Salvador which ofcourse splits up all the votes of Latin America. CARICOM makes it a policy to choose one state or member as a delegate and they wont introduce any other competitors to divide the CARICOM vote. Latin America needs to start doing the same. IMHO you all can break all of these out into their Trade Blocs but you'll notice that CARICOM is pretty much the only one that makes it an issue or goal for having a cohesive foreign policy. Montserrat is still a part of the UK so they can't join the OAS or vote but if they were independent they would probably be infavor of Chile too.

None the less, CARICOM is also acting as a single bloc to have CARICOM be the headquarters of the Permanent Secretariat of the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA-ALCA)

CaribDigita 00:40, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Interesting analysis, thanks. If I could figure out where to start, I might hazard an answer. But it'd probably take me the best part of a day to write... Re the FTAA permanent secretariat HQ (if they actually bother deciding on one, with the fracas that has become, this OAS affair might lead to some of the South Americans abandoning Panama in favor of Port of Spain. Once the second-rate runners are eliminated, it'll be tight between T&T and Panama down to the post. And the SICE? Is that the Sistema de Integración Económica de C.A., SIECA? I know that's quite heavily involved with the Plan Puebla-Panamá. Cheers, –Hajor 20:43, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Port-Of-Spain currently has the backing of much of the Americas. Out of 34 total potential countries, there's "21" countries according to the Foreign Minister of Trinidad and Tobago [www.foreign.gov.tt] now backing T&T. Article here That includes CARICOM's 14 votes + Venezuela, Chile, Costa Rica, & Colombia for sure.

Central America prob. wont get it because it's split between Panama, and two locations in Mexico (Puebla?, and Cancun) I think they are.

Also its the "SICA" (Central American Integration System) which Belize is also involved, which I was thinking of. [6] CaribDigita 16:39, 6 May 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Country swapping

In recent edits Paraguay was moved from Derbez undeclared to Insulza declared and Grenada moved from Insulza undeclared to Derbez declared. I haven't read about these changes in the press. Can someone point to a source for this or I'll have to revert it. Thanks. —Cantus…☎ 20:27, Apr 12, 2005 (UTC)

Concur. I haven't seen anything to support that. –Hajor 20:43, 12 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Source: http://buscador.lanacion.com.ar/Nota.asp?nota_id=695444&high=derbez

(spanish) LeandroManuel 13 Apr

Spanish language external links

(Message left on User talk:Hajor by 128.187.0.165 (talk · contribs), copied here as an invitation for comments by the community at large.)

These links are not of relevance as they are not English. If they were in Chinese you wouldn't link them because they would be of absolutely no value—despite their quality. You should create a page for the article on the Spanish Wikipedia where they belong. Certainly you can reference them and reference the article in the Spanish Wikipedia. Perhaps this would be better suited for wikinews, or in your case spanish. For example, this link does not help whatsoever because the average English speaker cannot read it. That is the reason we have Wikpedia in other languages.

Needless to say, I disagree most strenuously with that position, and will continue to revert any deletion of those External Links, unless a strong community consensus emerges against me. The quality of, for example, today's article from El Mercurio is unparalleled by anything I have seen in the English-language press and it deserves inclusion. The Anglophone press has simply not been covering this story to the extent that the Latin American world has.

Were the Chinese url that anon cites to be included in an article of enormous interest to a part of the world where Chinese is predominantly spoken, I would not presume to delete it. After anon's first deletion of the urls, I classified them by language -- English links and Spanish links under each of the subheads -- and trimmed several of the more obsolete ones. That is as much of a compromise as I am prepared to offer at this point. As this news story evolves, if the English-speaking press begins to cover the story in any dept, and after the next round of elections comes and goes, the need to include foreign-language material will be less pressing, and most, if not all, of the Spanish links can be removed. –Hajor 04:00, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

One last postscript: creating a page called es:Your links are now here, where they belong on the Spanish-language Wikipedia -- just how close does that come to disrupting Wikipedia to illustrate a point? –Hajor

Well all I can say is read this. It's plain and simple M. bandana 07:35, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes it's plain and simple that English Wikipedia articles should be written in English. However, it's perfectly OK to cite external links in other languages if English sources are lacking or inadequate, as long as they're marked as being links in another language so people don't click on them for nothing. These links can not only serve as references (an encyclopedia is supposed to cite references), but they can be a starting point for other editors who do understand the foreign language to do further research and add to the article. -- Curps 08:00, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

External links are for more depth, for the ability to verify sources of information. Not everybody is going to understand these: sometimes these are scientific research articles written in English, but incomprehensible to people unfamiliar with the concepts and the necessary mathematics. Should these links be excluded?

Moreover, articles in non-English languages often have external links to English language documents, simply because often the best sources, or at least the easiest good sources to find, are in English. Surely the reverse is acceptable too. Example - the polish language article on race: pl:rasa - both external links are to English language documents. Nobody is offended by the presence of these (en) external links AFAIK. Boud 12:50, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Just for the record, es:Your links are now here, where they belong was redirected to es:Elección de 2005 del Secretario General de la OEA and the redirect deleted. The article was then listed for deletion, on the grounds that los artículos de Wikipedia no son meras colecciones de enlaces -- "wikipedia articles are not just collections of links", here and on w:es, it would appear. –Hajor 16:32, 13 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Update. The vote on es:Elección de Secretario General de la OEA, 2005 is currently at 4:2 in favour of deletion, even with the couple of stubby paragraphs Cantus and I wrote as an introduction (and, yeah, we're the two voting "keep"). The article didn't have the happiest of births, but (imho) Vfd-ing like that reflects very poorly on w:es. </mini-rant>. –Hajor 16:58, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I have already become bored with people at Spanish wikipedia. They think people should only add complete articles, which is not the point of Wikipedia. I have tried to express my view before, but there seems to be a small cabal ruling that little project, and I have no interest in dealing with that. —Cantus…☎ 21:41, Apr 26, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply. All in all, similar to my experience/conclusions. Allá ellos. –Hajor 22:10, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Paraguay for Chile and Grenada for Mexico

source: http://buscador.lanacion.com.ar/Nota.asp?nota_id=695444&high=derbez

(spanish)

A serious newspaper from Argentina.

Wow. Hadn't seen that in our press. I'll put a footnote after the listings. Thanks. –Hajor 03:53, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Dominican Rep.

Does this mean we can move the Dom Rep up to "Insulza, declared"? –Hajor 12:58, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Breakdown of support table

I put it back to the way it was at the end of the first-round vote: the only subsequent change was Haiti, and leaving it at the 17:17 split is probably of more interest to the historical record. –Hajor 20:08, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)