Government Pulls Globo TV Off Cable

The Commission Nacional de Telecommunicaciones (CONATEL) issued a memo on May 20 identifying 21 broadcasters it claimed were still broadcasting despite their licenses having expired.  On that list was Globo TV owned by Alejandro Villatoro Aguilar, which since 2009 has been one of the few opposition media.  The publication of that memo served as a warning to all of them that CONATEL would begin proceedings to fine them, and if they did not begin proceedings to renew their permits, CONATEL would shut them down.  The memo ended with the clause:

"respecting at all times the constitutional guarantee to defend yourself and due process"

before listing the 21 firms which included not only Globo TV but Angeluz TV, owned by the Diocese of Copan, and another station owned by an Evangelical Church.

Due process, according to journalist David Romero, involves giving the station 10 days to either correct the fault or challenge the allegation that its deficient in some way.  Of the 21 stations mentioned in the memo, 20 of them are still on the air, not yet sanctioned.  But CONATEL choose on May 16th to sanction Globo TV and issued an order to all cable tv system operators to stop carrying their signal.

Globo TVs license expired on February 21, 2016, about the same time as its company lawyer died, so there was a delay of about a week getting a payment for the renewal to CONATEL, but that money was paid on February 29, 2016, and until the notification today, Globo TV assumed everything had been taken care of.

Friday, May 20, Romero showed a copy of the memo CONATEL sent to the cable tv operators, dated May 16th, before CONATEL issued its public memo, stating that Globo TV had not paid to renew its license and ordering all cable tv operators in Honduras to cease carrying the channel. He then showed the stamped receipts from February 29 demonstrating that Globo TV had paid the license renewal fee in the Banco Atlantida on that day.

Ebal Jair Diaz Lupian, President of CONATEL, and Secretary of the Presidential Cabinet of the Government of Honduras said "You cannot renew that which is expired."

Yet that's precisely what the CONATEL memo tells them to do according to Soraya Solabarrieta, head of the Asociación de Empresas de Telecomunicaciones (Asetel).  She argued that the CONATEL order is inconsistent, saying:

"On the one hand it orders the cable systems to take off the air the signals of those operators who are supposedly operating without permission, but on the other hand, for all of them, it gives them 10 days to submit their statements, that what they need to do is present their requests to renew their permission [to broadcast]."

Javier Daccarett signed the order to cable companies to stop carrying Globo TV.  He's the first cousin of Anna Garcia de Hernandez, the wife of the President of Honduras.

So no 10 days granted to Globo TV, no due process, no right to defend itself, and selective enforcement against only Globo TV of the 21 stations operating with allegedly expired licenses, and only hard line intransigence as a response from CONATEL.

"Central American Spring"?

The Economist published an article  that provocatively asks in the headline if the 12 weeks of torchlight marches in Honduras is "A Central American Spring".

The paper quickly repudiates that idea in the body of the article. The Arab Spring was rapid and violent.  Rather than a violent uprising, the Economist quotes Central American Business Intelligence as expecting slow, gradual change in Central America.

Slow, gradual change is not what the people protesting want: they are asking for the current president to resign.

For 14 weeks in Honduras the indignados, those upset with corruption and impunity in Honduras, have taken to the streets in all the major cities, carrying bamboo torches (not unlike the patio torches one can buy here in the US), seeking a Honduran International Commission against Impunity (CICIH in Spanish) and the removal of Juan Orlando Hernandez. 

While there are no official crowd estimates, the marches clearly mobilize tens of thousands of people in both Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula alone. Also remarkable is the range of cities and towns where marches are taking place. They are substantial and peaceful.

In an attempt to defuse the crowds, Hernandez has called for facilitators and mediators from the Organization of American States and the UN to oversee what he calls "dialogue".  This is in lieu of asking for a CICIH, which would be appointed by the UN to independently investigate corruption and impunity in Honduras. 

Hernandez alleges his government's efforts to reform the government are sufficient if people just give the institutions a chance to operate.

But the institutions he wants the Honduran people to trust aren't operating.

A snail's pace would be fast compared to the Public Prosecutor's office, for example. 

A trail of checks document the movement of money from the Instituto Hondureño de Seguridad Social (IHSS) through at least three front companies in Honduras into the National Party bank accounts including those of the Hernandez Presidential Campaign. When journalists made this public in May, they used copies of the checks from the actual prosecutorial case file shared with them.  Despite this financial trail, no one has been charged, and no one even questioned, about these checks, checks that implicate the leadership of the National Party in corruption. 

There are actually indications that the Assistant Public Prosecutor, Rigoberto Cuellar, may himself be linked to an influence-pedaling scandal, but he is not as yet the target of any investigation.

This is the face of impunity in Honduras. It is why the indignados are marching. And they are marching for a specific remedy that exists in action in their neighbor to the north, Guatemala.

In Guatemala, people are also marching weekly. Here, there is already an International Commission against Corruption and Impunity (CICIG in Spanish), sponsored by the UN at Guatemala's request, and funded by voluntary contributions from a number of different countries. 

This unit, as noted in the Economist article, has been instrumental in uncovering and prosecuting corruption in the Guatemalan governments past and present. The transparency of these investigations served to mobilize the populace of Guatemala tired of corruption. 

The CICIG has in fact, sought to bring charges against the President and Vice President of Guatemala for corruption. Over 100,000 people gathered last week in central Guatemala City to call for the President to resign. Their demands have now been endorsed by the country's Roman Catholic bishops.

In Honduras, at least for now, President Hernandez is not only rejecting the idea of an independent CICIH, he's actively working to discredit the idea through the public pronouncements of his advisor Ebal Diaz, who has made up "facts" to discredit the CICIG.  Officially the National Party Congressional delegation is against the proposal as well.  Mauricio Oliva, President of Congress, called it "foreign intervention".

Almost every other political party in Honduras supports the call for the CICIH. LIBRE supports it; the AntitCorruption Party (PAC) does too. 

The Liberal Party recently held a "unification" meeting to align its congressional delegation with the thinking of its directorate. The idea of a CICIH was a key source of difference. The Liberals in Congress recently voted against legislation that would have put the call for a CICIH to a public referendum, legislation sponsored by LIBRE.  At the time they said they voted against it because they thought it would delay prosecution, particularly of former Zelaya government officials. The directorate of the Liberal Party was in favor of a referendum, making the defection of its Congressional delegation a major issue. In the unification meeting, the party members agreed to vote for a CICIH if it comes up again.  But it is unclear that the Congressional leadership will allow another vote.

Last Wednesday, the indignados held a national strike, calling for businesses to shut down and main traffic arteries in the country to be blocked. Roads were blocked for a time until the police broke up the protests, and some businesses shut down, but not most. 

Last Friday's march ended at the Consejo Hondureño de Empresa Privada (COHEP) building where marchers met with business leaders. Whether this will result in businessmen supporting the marchers' goals is an open question, but the fact that talks were entertained is significant. COHEP  supports the government; any change in support here would likely destabilize it.

Slow change indeed.

Ebal Diaz: "We Didn't Invent the Numbers"-- Except He Did

In a previous post, we quoted Ebal Diaz, an adviser to Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez as saying the CICIG (Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala), a UN backed commission formed to combat corruption in Guatemala, was ineffective.

He used this argument to turn aside the request of the Torchlight Marchers that Honduras ask for a similar International Commission Against Impunity (known as CICIH , its initials in Spanish).

The problem is, nothing he said is true.

Diaz is quoted as having said:

"The case of Guatemala,  How long did it take Guatemala to create the structure?  At least 7 years.  How much did it cost Guatemala? $150 million dollars.  How many cases did it resolve? Four."

A little bit later in the same article he said:

"Is this an alternative for the country?  There are the numbers; they're not something we invented.  So the Honduran people need justice...When?  In three years?  In 5 years? or now?  We're looking for solutions now by strengthening our [government] institutions."

Except the numbers do seem to be invented.  None of his statements are even remotely true.

Lets start with the easiest claim to debunk, the money.

Diaz claims the CICIG has cost Guatemala $150 million.  We're not sure where he got that number, but in fact, the CICIG has cost Guatemala nothing.  Its budget of $20 million annually is paid by a diverse international community, including the United States, Spain, the Netherlands, and several Scandinavian countries.  As the CICIG told the press in March of this year, It has not asked for or received any economic support from the government of Guatemala.

The only form of support it receives from the Guatemalan government is the assignment of members of the National Police for the purpose of security and investigation.  Even if you count their salaries as a cost of the CICIG, the amount would would be less than $2 million for a full eight years of support, based on online sources for National Police salaries in Guatemala.

Then there's the matter of timeline.

Diaz claimed it took Guatemala seven years to create the structure for the CICIG. In fact, the CICIG was created out of an agreement between the Government of Guatemala and the United Nations signed in December 2006 and ratified by the Guatemalan Congress in August 2007.  It took legal effect in September 2007.  Its first year of actual operation was 2008.  Thus, it has been in existence for eight years after a process that at most one could say took a little more than a year to initiate.

And then there is Diaz' claim that the CICIG has been ineffective.

The CICIG annual reports document that from the beginning, it has been extremely productive.  By the end of its first year of existence, it had hired 109 people from 24 different countries, 73% of its projected personnel.  It had negotiated its budgetary support through 2009 from 13 separate countries, and launched 15 investigations of high level corruption, including opening prosecution on two of those cases.  Some cases it investigated along with the Guatemalan Public Prosecutor's office, and some it investigated on its own.

Investigating cases wasn't the only thing the CICIG did. In the first year it also analyzed Guatemalan law and identified bottlenecks leading to a paralysis of the Guatemalan legal system.  It trained investigators in financial crimes.  It established a number of agreements with different parts of the Guatemalan government for bilateral cooperation.  It began recommending legislative changes to enhance accountability.

By the end of its second year of operation, the CICIG had opened 39 investigations.  The Public Prosecutor's office had set up the Special Prosecutor's office within its own structure so the CICIG and Ministerio Publico of Guatemala could cooperate on investigations and prosecutions.  By the third year they had reached a staff of 196 from 23 nations, ironically, including Honduras. It had opened 56 investigations from about 1800 cases presented to it, and closed a further 189 cases.

I could continue but the record is exhaustive and speaks of many accomplishments.

As the WOLA report on the CICIG notes, by 2013 the CICIG had investigated more than 150 cases on its own, and joined with the Public Prosecutor's office in investigating a further 50 cases.  WOLA notes that the Guatemalan Congress is the only group that has been slow to adopt CICIG suggestions, with it only passing 4 of 15 suggested legal code changes.

Diaz's allegation that the CICIG has only prosecuted four cases is especially disingenuous.

The CICIG website lists more than 20 cases in which they participated that resulted in convictions. The CICIG was set up to cooperate with the Public Prosecutor's office and support their investigations and prosecution wherever and whenever that was possible.  It was only when the Public Prosecutor's office refused to investigate or take up a case that the CICIG was authorized to proceed on its own.

To discredit the Torchlight Marchers and their demand for a similar commission for Honduras, Ebal Diaz made up his facts and fed them to the Honduran press, hoping that no one in Honduras would fact check him.

Ebal Diaz: "We've already contained the corruption"

Large Torchlight Marches (Marchas de las Antorchas) have been going on every night in different cities in Honduras for at least the last three weeks.

Participants have called for three things: an end to impunity, the establishment of an International Commission against Impunity, and the resignation of Juan Orlando Hernández, President of Honduras, due to corruption in his election campaign.

The Partido Nacional has admitted that the election of Hernández was funded in part by resources diverted from the IHSS. Nonetheless, both the party, and the government it controls, are against Honduras calling for an International Commission against Impunity.

That's the word from Ebal Diaz, a Honduran presidential advisor.

These commissions, organized by the UN, have been effective in other countries where they've been formed, such as Guatemala.

Honduras doesn't need one because, according to Diaz, "We've already contained the corruption." 

Diaz goes further, calling the Guatemala commission ineffective. He relates that it has cost $150 million over its seven year life, and successfully brought and prosecuted only four cases of corruption or impunity. 

Diaz said:

"Is this an alternative for the country?  There are the numbers; they're not something we invented.  So the Honduran people need justice...When?  In three years?  In 5 years? or now?  We're looking for solutions now by strengthening our [government] institutions."

Diaz suggests the government might accelerate its pace of cleaning up corruption and implementing training.

These actions, however, do nothing to capture and prosecute those who perpetrated the crimes, something Diaz fails to address.

The recent Congressional Commission which reviewed a series of corruption cases involving the IHSS, INPREMA, and the IP, and the assassinations of notable government officials like Alfredo Landaverde, was relatively useless.

It served only to confirm what everyone already knows: the Public Prosecutor's office is barely investigating these cases of corruption and impunity, some of which have stretched on for more than seven years in the investigative state. While it might eventually bring charges against those immediately responsible, it likely will not pursue those who planned and directed the crimes. From that perspective, then, even with the "numbers" Diaz cites, a commission like that in Guatemala would be an improvement.

The level of corruption and impunity in Honduras is hard to believe. In fact, even as the Congressional report was being released, the lead on the congressional committee, Mario Perez, was being identified in the Honduran press as a drug trafficker, based on Honduran government documents from 2012.

Impunity reigns in Honduras not because the Public Prosecutor's office is incapable of pursing these crimes. It has been endlessly trained under US and European foreign aid programs in investigation and prosecution of organized crime. 

To pursue these crimes is neither politically expedient, nor good for a prosecutor's longevity.  No government program will address either of these risks.

The previous Prosecutor against corruption, Roberto Ramirez Aldana, who had headed the IHSS investigation from the start, recently took an extended leave to assume a government post as Honduras's Ambassador to UNESCO.  He did so because the Honduran Military Intelligence agency informed him of credible death threats against him and suggested he leave the country.

One of the trails of corruption leads directly to the currently ruling Partido Nacional. But the current Public Prosecutor, Oscar Chinchilla, was appointed by that party, while Juan Orlando Hernandez was the President of Congress, during the presidential term of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.  Chinchilla sets the priorities for the office. He's focusing the department on corruption during José Manuel Zelaya's term as president, largely ignoring more recent corruption that can be linked to his own party.

Arturo Corrales, Honduras' Foreign Minister, has said Honduras will not ask for an International Commission against Corruption from the UN.

Rigoberto Chang Castillo, currently Minister of Justice, the Interior, and Decentralization, went further: he made up a criterion for when such a commission is necessary: "Only when there's a high degree of ingovernability". Chang Castillo claims that "Honduras isn't worthy" of such a designation.  These kinds of commissions, he continued,

"uniquely can be asked for by the government of the Republic when the country is in a state of ingovernability and there is no confidence in the institutions of the State....This is requested when the Judicial system has collapsed."

The irony is, Chang Castillo precisely describes the Honduras that the Torchlight Marchers see.

First ZEDE Pre-announced

Ebal Diaz, advisor to Juan Orlando Hernández, pre-announced the announcement of the first Zona de Empleo y Desarrollo Económico (ZEDE) in Honduras. 

ZEDEs, private economic development zones,  are the concept that replaced model cities after that law was ruled unconstitutional.  Arthur Phillips has an excellent summary on how the ZEDE law came into being here.

The new ZEDE will be on the Pacific coast of Honduras and will reportedly occupy a number of municipalities in the department of Choluteca and possibly Valle as well.   Diaz said:

I dare say that on February 10 prestigious investors from all over the world will come to the country to invest in factories in several locations in the Departments of Choluteca and Valle. 

Diaz indicated that the project had both Honduran and international funding, and would be formally announced on February 10.