One of the common complains about the OAS and the democracy charter is that it is an organization of presidents. They'll jump up and down if a president is threatened, but they generally ignore cases in which legislatures, judiciaries or civil society is threatened by the executive branch.
This has long been an area for potential reform, but never moves forward. Why? Presidents are the ones in charge and don't want to restrict their own power.
Instead of continuing to try and fail to reform, what if legislatures simply decided to create a separate and parallel organization to the OAS. The legislatures around the hemisphere that wanted to participate could send representatives to a big Summit that paralleled the Summit of the Americas. They could agree to hold meetings and to pass resolutions as a group.
There are numerous political and constitutional challenges to creating such an organization. The first challenge is that presidents wouldn't allow it. Across the hemisphere, presidents would veto or otherwise block any potential legislative agreements to join such an organization. In some places, the legislatures may have to join over the president's objection, which could create tensions.
If just a few countries' congresses could get together to begin the group, declaring it the co-equal branch of regionalism to the OAS and working to fill in the gaps where the OAS fails, it could gain some momentum. They could pressure the OAS to reform its policies or they could just start working on their own to improve hemispheric relations in areas where presidents can't.
At its strongest, it's a regional push against the presidentialism that dominates much of the Americas. Some particularly powerful presidents might even call it a type of regional coup or revolution. At its weakest, the organization fails. But it's not a particularly resource intensive initiative. Why not try to form it and fail rather than list reasons why it won't succeed and never try.
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