Above: OAS Secretary General Jose Manuel Insulza and Belizean Ambassador to the OAS Nestor Mendez (OAS Photo)

By the Caribbean Journal staff

The Organization of American States has signed an agreement with Belize to monitor the country’s elections March 7, according to OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza.

The OAS signed the pact with Belize today that establishes the conditions for the Electoral Observation Mission that will accompany Belize’s general and municipal elections.

“Throughout the Americas, indeed throughout the world, it is widely known that the election observer missions of the OAS are a hallmark of this institution, and that the presence of the missions has evolved into an acceptable imprimatur of a free, fair and transparent exercise of democracy in the countries of the Americas,” said Ambassador Nestor Mendez, Belize’s Permanent Representative to the OAS.

Mendez called the agreement “an important step in the formalization of the process for the observation mission to take place.”

Ambassador Frank Almaguer, former US Ambassador to Honduras, will lead the mission in Belize. The group will arrive in Belize one week before the vote.