CONATEL attempts to shut down Cholusat Sur

(updated to link to image of CONATEL order)
The government of Honduras, in the form of the Comision Nacional de Telecommunicaciones (CONATEL), has issued an order to close the opposition TV station, Cholusat Sur, Channel 36 in Tegucigalpa in 4 days.

Why? you might ask.

For an "attempt against the economy" of Honduras. 

It all begins in June of this year, with Channel 36 covering the news story that the Banco Ficohsa and more importantly, its Honduran owner, Camilo Atala, have been charged in Panama with money laundering.

This is not speculation.  This is not rumor.  It's a fact.

Atala is head of the Honduran branch of the Consejo Empresarial de America Latina (CEAL). This was the group that hired Lanny Davis in 2009 to lobby then- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton not to declare the Honduran coup a military coup. Atala is a powerful member of the Honduran elite.

In the current news coverage, Esdras Amado López has been reporting how Banco Ficohsa in Honduras moved $1.5 million dollars (about 33 million lempiras) as part of the IHSS scandal, without fulfilling the CNBS paperwork requirements for the transfer. The IHSS scandal is what initially fueled and continues to inspire the torchlit marches against corruption that also include demands for the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernández.

The money moved by Banco Ficohsa, Amado Lopez reports, was requested by IHSS head Mario Zelaya to pay bribes to facilitate payment of the Compania de Servicios Multiples and its subsidiary, Central American Technologies. These were payments for goods and services that were never delivered.

Amado Lopez says that both the US Department of Justice and the Fiscalia de Chile have documentation linking the Banco Ficohsa to the illegal movement of IHSS monies.

Chile is where one of Mario Zelaya's mistresses lives and she is charged in the IHSS scandal.

The US Department of Justice allegedly knows about the money sent from Honduras to Panama by the Banco Ficohsa, then deposited in MultiBank in Panama. Reportedly, the funds were then transferred to a bank in Louisiana where Mario Zelaya used them to buy real estate, property now confiscated for the government of Honduras by the US Department of Justice.

Other news sources have reported on this story, both inside of and outside of Honduras, citing court papers in Louisiana as the source of their information.

CONATEL, in its notification to Cholusat Sur that it was beginning procedures to shut down the station, said that this reporting was "an attempt against the economy" of Honduras in violation of the Constitution, the Telecommunications regulations, and the Administrative regulations.

So, it is now officially an "attempt against the economy" to report facts in Honduras.

Ortez Colindres joins Lobo Sosa in admitting it was a coup

Is confession good for the soul? It must be, because it sure isn't obvious how it is good politically, yet here comes another Honduran politician to join Porfirio Lobo Sosa in admitting that what happened June 28, 2009 was a coup.

In the latest episode, Honduras' Tiempo brings back one of the most outrageous members of the Micheletti regime, Enrique Ortez Colindres, the man whose racist comments about Barack Obama never were translated into completely accurate equivalents in English language coverage.

And it isn't just that Ortez Colindres-- briefly the Secretary of State for Micheletti until his impolitic comments brought him down-- admits it was a coup. He says it was completely planned and executed by the Armed Forces.

Colindres made the comments by telephone to Cholusat Sur (Channel 36), a noted anti-coup media outlet in Tegucigalpa.

Esdras Amado López, the reporter Colindres tried to take on, was reportedly criticizing Ortez Colindres for suggesting that Lobo Sosa should be talking to Hugo Chavez in pursuit of readmission to the OAS. Amado López expressed the view that Ortez Colindres was contradicting the position he took during the coup, when he characterized Chavez as "the devil".

Seeking to explain his position, here's what Ortez Colindres said, live, on television:

“The conditions did not exist to negotiate with Chávez [in the de facto regime] because the enemy of the Army of Honduras is Chávez and Micheletti had been put in the hierarchy of command by the Army."

“I don't believe that Micheletti would have had the courage, nor the individual ability to go to sit with Chávez without having the approval of the commander who put him in that moment, which was the Armed Forces, today it's different."

“The military are those that made the legal chain run and put in [Micheletti]."

"The Army put him in and why would I am deny it, they are the ones that made the succession."

Now, the one thing obvious after Ortez Colindres brief, disastrous "career" as a diplomat for Micheletti is that he is-- well, loose cannon hardly seems strong enough. A buffoon?

But still: these seem likely to be explosive comments among politicians so eager to pretend that what happened was completely legitimate that they have bullied their "Truth Commission" not to even use the words "coup d'etat".

It has always been clear that one way for the civilian authors of the coup to attempt to wriggle out of responsibility would be to blame the whole thing on the military. That was one of the reasons there were so many press statements by the military last year. But unlike their almost hysterical efforts at PR during the coup, the current military seems disinclined to respond to this provocation.

Yet these are the most open attempts to implicate the army that are possible. Ortez Colindres said

“I recommended to the [military] command that they go to speak with Zelaya Rosales to respect him, but they said: He is olanchano [from Olancho] and he is going to command us... if we ask that he stops the cuarta urna and he fired Romeo Vásquez Velásquez."

So: is this blame-shifting? or what Ortez Colindres actually thinks happened? And how can the Armed Forces actually ignore being blamed, not just for the decision to remove Zelaya (illegally) from Honduras-- which Ortez Colindres says set in motion the (presumably constitutional) installation of Micheletti-- but the very idea of a coup?

And: what on earth does it mean to say that the enemy of the Honduran Army is Hugo Chávez?