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A long-anticipated meeting of foreign ministers of the member states of the Mercosur trading bloc was canceled after the governments of Paraguay and Brazil announced they would boycott the meeting over a disagreement concerning the handing over of the bloc's presidency to Venezuela.
The meeting has been repeatedly delayed as officials try to negotiate behind closed doors to solve the impasse.
Uruguay, the current president pro-tempore, was expected to hand the rotating presidency to Venezuela this year. However, both Paraguay and Brazil are opposed to Venezuela's ascension over concerns about its ongoing economic and political crisis.
A presidential aide in Brazil, which is currently ruled by a coup-imposed government, previously said that the government would try to cancel or delay the Mercosur meeting or it could try to win the votes of other members to suspend Venezuela from Mercosur.
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The fact that the meeting was canceled suggests Brazil and Paraguay were unable to gather the votes to see Venezuela suspended. Mercosur operates on a consensus decision-making model.
Paraguay was the last country to be suspended from the bloc after a parliamentary coup, similar to the one executed in Brazil, ousted the democratically elected president from power in 2012.
The government of Uruguay has defended the right of Venezuela to assume the presidency.
Uruguayan officials said Friday that their time occupying the presidency of the bloc had concluded and that as of Saturday they would not longer serve in that role.
It is unclear what country, if any, will occupy the post after Saturday.
“We have an integration project that was born with a lot of ambition and today is demonstrating its enormous weakness from an institutional point of view. I think we must approach this with great sincerity, and much effort,” Uruguayan Finance Minister Danilo Astori told El Observador.
Part of the issue is that Mercosur's own documents are not sufficiently specific about what should occur in circumstances like these. Some have speculated that if Venezuela does not assume the post, it would go to the next member-state in alphabetical order, which would be Argentina.
“I don't see a clear solution in the short term,” added Astori.
Venezuelan Foreign Minister Delcy Rodriguez was recently in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital, and said she received assurances from the Uruguayan government that her country would assume the post of president of the bloc.
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