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Republicans Reject Appointment Of Ambassador

Posted by: Linda Carbonell on December 16, 2011.

Ambassador Mari Carmen Aponte

There is a chasm between an exercise of power and being a power-mad jackass. Senator Jim DeMint has been on the wrong side of that chasm ever since he designated himself the “filibuster-in-chief.”

Mari Carmen Aponte has served as our country’s ambassador to El Salvador since September, 2010, when President Obama used a Congressional recess to temporarily appoint her. She is an Hispanic activist and has established a good rapport with the government of President Mauricio Funes, so good in fact, that she wrote an op-ed for the Salvadorean press supporting Funes’ anti-discrimination Decree 56. That’s how she ticked off DeMint enough for him to lead a Republican drive to deny her a permanent position as our ambassador.

In her June 28 op-ed, Aponte wrote “No one should be subjected to aggression because of who he is or who he loves. Homophobia and brutal hostility are often based on lack of understanding about what it truly means to be gay or transgender. To avoid negative perceptions, we must work together with education and support for those facing those who promote hatred.” Can we start with educating DeMint? Probably wouldn’t help.

DeMint went so far as to help spread the unfounded rumor that Ms. Aponte’s “boyfriend of years ago was a Cuban spy.” That’s going really low.

Working off the absence of fourteen senators, DeMint was able to get Aponte’s confirmation denied on a party line 49 to 37 vote.

In his speech on the Senate floor, DeMint said, “Ms. Aponte has enflamed tensions in the same country she should be improving diplomatic relations. Her decision to publish an opinion piece hostile to the culture of El Savadorians present even more doubts about her fitness for the job. This op-ed upset a large number of community and pro-life groups in El Salvador who were insulted by Ms. Aponte’s rhetoric. A coalition of more than three dozen groups has since written the Senate asking its members to oppose Ms. Aponte’s confirmation. I quote from their letter in which they wrote, “we respectfully request that Ms. Aponte be removed from post as soon as possible so that El Salvador may enjoy the benefits of having a person as a government representative of your nobile country.” In other words, send us a narrow-minded, anti-gay, anti-women’s rights bigot just like yourself.

It is not the function of an ambassador to represent a segment of the nation’s population to its leader. It is the function of an ambassador to represent our government to their government. Ms. Aponte has done that very well. Her op-ed reflected the views of both the Salvadorean administration and ours, and 63 other countries, as she explained in an interview with La Prensa. “It [the op-ed] was not drafted as an insult to anyone.” That didn’t keep DeMint from apologizing to the groups “on behalf of the United States and reassure them that most Americans share their values,” during the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in November. Oh really? “Most Americans?” Have you seen a poll lately, DeMint? Over half of us support same-sex marriage.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid also deserves criticism on this one. With 14 Senators AWOL, and the Republicans in a majority on Thursday, it was nuts to allow this appointment to come up for a vote. Reid decides when anything is voted on in the Senate. Was he one of the absentees?

A homophobic bigot has apologized for my country to a minority group of homophobic bigots who are opposed to a government policy against discrimination. He has denied the appointment of a qualified, capable ambassador to appease some other country’s homophobic bigots. DeMint’s ego obviously got swelled by being the man who personally extended the filibusters that killed almost 300 bills and allowed the Republicans to say that the President didn’t do anything for two years. It got swelled so much that he thinks he has the right to speak to the world for all of us. Unfortunately, he was re-elected in 2010, so we have got five long years to convince the people of South Carolina that DeMint is a power-mad jackass.