During the XLIX regular session of the OLADE Meeting of Ministers, held in Lima, Peru on November 14, 2019, under strict compliance with the provisions of the Lima Agreement and the internal regulations of OLADE, the election process of the Executive Secretary of OLADE for the period 2020-2022 was held.
The aforementioned electoral process (under the direction of the Presidency of the Meeting of Ministers of OLADE in charge of the Dominican Republic) was carried out by secret ballot between the government authorities designated by: Argentina, Belize, Brazil, Chile, Costa Rica, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Dominican Republic, Trinidad & Tobago and Uruguay. It is important to note that even though the XLIX Meeting of Ministers had the participation of twenty (20) Member Countries in the voting process, only eighteen (18) countries participated, taking into account that, according to certification data presented by the OLADE’s Administration, Shared Services and Finance Directorate, two (2) of these countries were disabled to exercise the right to vote due to delays in fulfilling their financial obligations to OLADE.
The XLIX regular session of the OLADE Meeting of Ministers had the active participation of five (5) authorities with the rank of Ministers, five (5) Vice Ministers, five (5) directors, two (2) Ambassadors, and three (3) Senior government officials in the energy sector, for a total of 20 Member Countries present in this regular session of the highest governance body of the organization.
In response to the corresponding call circulated by the Permanent Secretariat of OLADE in May of the current year, the candidacies of the Republic of Guatemala and the Oriental Republic of Uruguay were received, seeking the re-election of the Acting Executive Secretary. As a result of the voting process, two (2) votes were obtained in favor of the candidate presented by the Republic of Guatemala and sixteen (16) votes in favor of the candidate presented by the Oriental Republic of Uruguay.
It should be noted that, the candidate from Uruguay, Alfonso Blanco (current Executive Secretary of OLADE), having obtained a number of favorable votes exceeding two thirds (2/3) of the countries present with the right to vote, value corresponding to the regulatory minimum enforceable, it was not required to conduct a second instance of voting provided for in the General Regulations of OLADE for cases in which none of the candidates obtains 2/3 of favorable votes in the initial phase of voting.
After the verification of the results, the Presidency of the highest governance body of OLADE, in the full exercise of the powers conferred by the Lima Agreement, in terms of appointing and removing the Executive Secretary of the Permanent Secretariat, proclaimed the Engineer Numar Alfonso Blanco Bonilla as the winning candidate and therefore OLADE’s Executive Secretary for the period 2020-2022.
