As The US Withdraws, Hugo Chavez Moves In

The United States has cut back its aid to Honduras.

The Peace Corp has withdrawn, perhaps for only a month, perhaps for a longer period.

Honduras did not qualify for the new Millennium Challenge grant competition this year, and so has been offered lesser aid.

BID and the World Bank are funding at lower levels than in the past.

Yet the government must go on.

Like Manuel Zelaya Rosales, Porfirio Lobo Sosa is turning to ready sources of investment in Honduras to replace the US and European reductions. China and Taiwan figure large in Lobo Sosa's plans, as do Brazil and Colombia.

But also among the choices being discussed is soliciting funding from Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.

Suddenly the right wing in Honduras is quiet. Porfirio Lobo Sosa has announced that a return of Honduras to its Petrocaribe contract is assured; which has garnered nothing but praise from business organizations. US Ambassador Charles Ford, when Zelaya did the same, said charges could be brought against Honduras for violating the rights of existing transnational corporations and their importers in Honduras to sell their products at a higher price, noting it would reduce the profitability of Texaco, Shell, and Esso.

In June of 2008, ANDI and Transportation Council asked the government to supply them with lower priced Venezuelan oil. COHEP, the other main business council, also saw the Petrocaribe deal as good in 2008. PVDSA allowed the government of Honduras to buy 50% of the oil on a 25 year loan at 1% interest. The balance was sold at market rates. Honduras made its payments to PDVSA, even under Micheletti's de facto government, while using the income from investing the deferred payments for social projects in Honduras.

Now Hugo Chavez has offered to end the conflict over land in the Aguan by having the Venezuelan state oil company, Alba-Petróleo, pay the 546 million lempiras on the loan the Honduran government will set up to buy 5700 hectares of land in the Aguan at market rate. This would make it possible for the government to get better terms with the bank.

Title to the land would pass to Alba-Petróleo, which intends to mortgage it back to the campesinos of MUCA and MARCA.

Chavez also offered to have Alba-Petróleo build an African palm fruit processing plant with agreements to give MUCA and MARCA access to markets for their palm oil. This, by the way, would be in direct competition with Miguel Facussé whose DINANT Corporation has already built a palm oil processing plant in the Aguan, who expected to get much of the palm fruit from MUCA and MARCA to process.

The amount of land being discussed, 5700 hectares, is larger than that mentioned in a purchase agreed to between the government and Facussé of 4045.7 hectares. Its not clear where the additional land is coming from, but it may be that Facussé has agreed to be bought completely out of the Aguan.

This deal raises some potential legal issues, since under the agreement, Alba-Petróleo would presumably, temporarily hold title to the land before mortgaging it to the campesino organizations, and this appears to contrevene article 14 of the Honduran constitution, which allows foreign governments title only to the land occupied by their embassy. This could easily be overcome by having title pass to the Honduran government as guarantor of the campesino organization's mortgage.

El Heraldo reports that the rough details for such an accord have already been worked out with INA and it awaits Porfirio Lobo Sosa's permission to go ahead and negotiate the final details.

Facussé expects to be paid on January 4 for 4045. hectares of land.

Solar Powered Wedge against Chavez?

There's a lot of renewable energy projects being authorized, or coming on line, in Honduras in the last month. But I've never seen one described as a wedge against the political power of Hugo Chavez, of Venezuela, before today.

Onyx Services and Solutions, Inc., a solar power contractor that "focuses on energy solutions that empower our democracy and its allies’ strategic national and international energy policies", will expand into Honduras, building an 18.5 megawatt solar generation station on the island of Roatan. The project consists of installing approximately 65,958 280 watt panels and connecting them to the island's power grid at a total cost of $84 million.

Now this company is a strange bird. As recently as its November 2010 SEC 10K filing, its principal business was the ownership of a small network of ATM machines in Onondaga County in upstate New York. It obtained its capital by selling shares of stock, which expanded from 309,000 shares in November 2010, to over 4 million by April of 2011. As late as July, 2011, its business was the Automatic Teller Machines network in upstate New York.

It has no cash, no employees other than officers, according to its audit reports.

But then, in August of this year, it replaced its CEO and CFO with Malcom Burleson who previously ran a company called Solar-nomics, which he founded in 2009. Now Solar-nomics is a Centennial Colorado company founded in the category "Repair shop and related services" with 3 employees. Their mailing address is a PO Box in Aurora, Colorado. They don't list a phone contact anywhere on their website, which is filled with stock photography and generic solar information.

The first thing he did at Onyx was acquire Southern Geopower for a stock swap, with the help of Blackstone Equity Partners, who end up owning 78.5 % of the issued stock. Southern Geopower was developing a "unique wireless power transmission technology," but had no customers and was no longer a going concern. On September 13 they filed a stock registration statement with the SEC, proposing to compensate directors, officers, and consultants, with a pool of 5 million more shares of Onyx stock.

In September 2011, they wrote a proposal to be the lead contractor for an ENEE photovoltaic installation on Roatan. You can read the proposal (with the pricing data redacted) on their website here. Other than the price, there are no specifics in this proposal, only generalities about what they might do. No guarantee about whose panels, which inverters, what substation components, only suggestions about what they might use. They say they source their panels and inverters from Optimum Solar, a Chinese solar manufacturer. Yet on September 28, ENEE selected them to install the project.

Onyx writes in their description of the Roatan project:

"Many nations of Central America, South America and the Caribbean find themselves being squeezed by the need for power coupled with the temptation to use Venezuelan diesel for electrical generation. While this solution has provided a quick supply of power - it comes with a very high cost to the sovereignty and free will of these nations. .... Without power projects that reduce reliance on Venezuelan diesel, prices can be raised and lowered at will to force leaders of these nations to bend to the will of Hugo Chavez."

Someone better tell the poor of the US northeast not to use CITGO home heating oil, or CITGO gas, as CITGO is a wholly owned subsidiary of Venezuela's state owned oil company. CITGO has been working with states in the northeastern US to provide free or reduce cost home heating oil to poor families through groups like Citizen's Energy.

Perhaps Onyx needs to wage a campaign for solar contracts closer to home, in the northeast United States.

Lobo's Secret Pact Redux

Remember Roger Noriega's alarmist article on Fox about Porfirio Lobo Sosa's supposed "Secret Pact" with Hugo Chavez?

We first addressed it here.

Now, El Heraldo has published the text of what purports to be a diplomatic cable from the Venezuelan Embassy in Honduras back to Venezuela, detailing a meeting between Ariel Vargas, the Embassy's chargé d'affaires, and Porfirio Lobo Sosa in mid May of this year.

This should be the same cable Noriega refers to in his article, as we cannot imagine there are two diplomatic summaries of that meeting. Its content, as we suspected, bears no resemblance to what Roger Noriega says it said.

I would translate the cable for you, but it's long.

So, here are the interesting things Vargas reports Lobo Sosa telling him. They aren't Noriega's fantasies, but then, we all knew that, right?

The cable does not, as Noriega alleges, have Lobo Sosa "pledging his loyalty to Chavez". There's no description of Lobo Sosa as a "fervent revolutionary."

Lobo Sosa initiated the meeting, according to Vargas, after failing to reach Chavez by phone. He wanted to accelerate the negotiations with Chavez and Colombian President Santos and had some points he wanted to raise with respect to Zelaya's four demands.

Lobo Sosa noted the precarious political position of his government. This should come as no surprise to anyone reading this blog on a regular basis. Lobo Sosa has little traction, even in his own party.

Vargas says Lobo Sosa's strategy is not to come between opposing forces in Honduras, but to mediate between them, bringing elements of both sides forward in negotiated solutions.

As any realist knows, a Constituent Assembly is impossible given current politics in Honduras. It cannot happen without a major change in political opinion.

Vargas reports that Lobo Sosa says as much. Vargas reports that Lobo Sosa also says, to the extent that he can, he will work tactfully to change that opinion. However, he insisted that commitment to hold a Constituent Assembly could not be part of the Cartagena Agreement.

Lobo Sosa did not, as Noreiga claims, "say that he needed help neutralizing opposition within his own Nationalist Party and the Catholic Church."

What he did say is that both he and Chavez needed to work to build support for a Constituent Assembly with both the Catholic and Protestant churches in Honduras.

In response to Ecuador's demand that the authors of the coup be punished, Lobo Sosa noted that he had been called on the carpet by Congress (many members among the authors of the coup) when, traveling in Europe, he simply referred to the June 2009 coup as a coup.

Vargas reports that Lobo Sosa then joked that if he signed such an agreement, Chavez would quickly be receiving him in Venezuela as they would throw him out of Honduras as they had Zelaya.

The cable, in short, is a frank discussion of the four points Zelaya had proposed: what was, and was not, politically possible for Lobo Sosa.

Lobo Sosa, it appears, had not "posed as a fellow revolutionary", though Noriega was right that he did ask for Chavez's patience.

It was not the military's backing Lobo Sosa said he would lose if he called it a coup, but rather Congress's.

So where does Noriega's fantasy of Lobo Sosa the revolutionary come from? we suggest three sources: first, anyone negotiating with Zelaya was betraying the right wing. The suspicion that Lobo Sosa shares a desire to change the constitution to allow the possibility of staying in power is there to be mobilized against him, as it now is against any Honduran president.

Second, anyone talking to Hugo Chavez.... well, we all KNOW what that means, comrade.

Finally, and this is the peculiarly Honduran piece: Lobo Sosa, after all, went to school in the Soviet Union. It seems for some people, no amount of right wing conversion can entirely clear up a mis-spent youth.

What's In The Kool-Aid?

Roger Noriega has a good conservative pedigree.

He was ambassador to the OAS from 2001-2003, and then worked as an Asssistant Seccretary of State in the State Department from 2003-2005. Now he's a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and managing director of Vision America LLC, a lobbying firm. As a lobbyist, he has to place press op-ed opinion pieces for clients from time to time. I have to assume his latest on Fox News is placement for a client, because if he believes it, he should have his beverage of choice analyzed for hallucinogens.

Noriega's piece posits a secret meeting in mid-May between Porfirio Lobo Sosa and Ariel Vargas, representing Hugo Chavez, at Lobo Sosa's suburban home in Tegucigalpa.

The purpose of the meeting? Noriega claims that sources within the Venezuelan government told him Lobo Sosa did his best to convince Chavez's representative that he was still a "fervent revolutionary", and sought to enlist Chavez's patience and help with neutralizing the National Party and the Catholic Church so that he could bring in sweeping constitutional changes "that will allow the people to sweep out the old order."

Kind of reminds me of the whisper campaign against Lobo Sosa in the fall 2009 elections, reminding us he went to college in the former Soviet Union.

Ariel Vargas was the chargé d'affaires for the Venezuelan embassy in Honduras during the 2009 coup and defied Micheletti's expulsion order remaining locked in the embassy.

Noriega goes on to say that Chavez is now pouring millions of dollars into the FNRP to help it become a political party, bypassing Lobo Sosa and the Honduran military, which he would have us believe is the only institution in Honduras backing Lobo Sosa.

So why is Chavez doing this?

Noriega claims that Chavez is using Honduras to place drugs into Mexico and the US, as part of a plan to destabilize the US and Mexico. There are serious studies of drug circulation from South America through Honduras: this is not a contribution to that research.

And what conspiracy would be complete without an allegation that terrorists in Venezuela-- specifically, Hezbollah-- have been seeking information about sneaking across the US border undetected, a goal that somehow will be advanced if Honduras goes all 21st century socialist again under Lobo Sosa.

Noriega's article would be ludicrous, if it didn't echo the tone-- if not the specifics-- of right wing elements in Honduras displeased that Lobo Sosa negotiated with Manuel Zelaya at all. But only in a right wing fantasy-- that is, nightmare-- can Porfirio Lobo Sosa be recast as avid revolutionary.

The Cartagena Accord

The Cartagena Accord has been published. Here is a translation of the actual points of the agreement with some initial comments:

1. The framing of all actions and decisions of the government of Honduras in strict compliance with the constitution and the law.

This is a recognition by both sides that Honduras is governed by the rule of law, and that the conflict must be settled using that law. As we've seen, the interpretation of that law can be pretty malleable in the Honduran courts....

2. Ensure that former president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales can return to Honduras, with full recognition of his rights under the constitution and laws of Honduras, including the exercise of political action, in terms of security and freedom.

3. Deepening the guarantees for the return, safety, and freedom, of the former officials of the government of former president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, and others affected by the crisis who are not abroad, with full recognition of their rights under the constitution and laws of Honduras.

This is actually a broadening beyond the initial demand, which was just for guarantees for Zelaya himself. Many former government officials, and members of the FNRP, are still living in exile.

4. To welcome the decision of the competent authorities to anull the legal proceedings against former president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, highlighting the presentation of documents by the Public Prosecutor's office and the Attorney General's office before the ad-hoc Court of Appeals according to which both institutions waive the right to appeal, and its admission by the Court, which makes the Court's decision final.

Put another way, we celebrate the "happy coincidence" that the law allowed the charges against Zelaya to be annulled. But as has been noted many times before, while the Court's decision to annul was final, both the Public Prosecutor and the Attorney General's office retained the right to refile charges at any time once they correct the procedural errors. In the absence of an admission that the charges themselves were without merit, the international position that the charges amounted to political persecution is not upheld by the Cartagena Accord.

5. To watch in a special way to ensure compliance with the constitution of the Republic with regard to guarantees of respect and the protection of human rights.

We're not quite sure what they mean here. Is the Compliance Commission going to have oversight of this ("the special way") or is it the Honduran Minister of Justice and Human Rights, Ana Pineda, who so far has assured there is lip service to Human Rights, but no actual compliance?

6. To ensure compliance with all guarantees that the law gives the National Front for Popular Resistance applying for registration [as a political party] before the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to participate democratically in the electoral political process in Honduras and to enable government agencies to integrate it as an electoral political equal. In this context and with the full respect of procedures and legal powers, to instruct the Compliance Commission to verify compliance with the procedures for registration of the People's National Front in an atmosphere of cooperation and transparency.

In some ways this is the most interesting of the agreements. It highlights the tension within the FNRP over whether to become a political party or not. Negotiations were carried out by Juan Barahona, a former campesino leader, on behalf of the FNRP, and he has clearly been in favor of the Frente becoming a political party, but other significant factions in the Frente, such as COPINH, have not. It will be interesting to see their public statements in reaction to the agreement. Can the Frente survive being fractioned into both a political party, and a wider social movement as this split would imply?

7. Reiterate that the amendment to Article 5 of the Honduran constitution regulates the call for a referendum with clearly established procedures, allowing the possibility for the people to be consulted. This reform enables all sectors to launch legal procedures to conduct a plebiscite and thus subject directly to the will of the people the political, economic and social through the new constitutional plebiscite and referendum. Therefore, the request that the former president Zelaya made to convene a National Constituent Assembly will be part of these consultation mechanisms. In this regard, the government of Honduras is committed to the taking measures that are within their legal powers to ensure the electoral rights of citizens, and to instruct the Compliance Commission to verify compliance with the procedures established for the conduct of referendums in the Republic of Honduras, when this process is initiated by any sector, with total respect for the legal powers of the branches of government, which complement the paperwork associated with these processes.

While Zelaya initially called for, as part of the accord, a National Constituent Assembly, this clause represents Lobo Sosa's response. Lobo Sosa and the Honduran National Congress have been busy making sure that everything Zelaya tried to do, and allegedly was overthrown for doing, is sanctioned under current Honduran law. To that end, Congress rewrote large sections of the Constitution over the last 2 years, making it possible for citizens to collect signatures to convene an election to modify the constitution of Honduras.

The fact that the Frente collected over a million signatures (1.3 million) calling for a National Constituent Assembly certainly contributed to making this a legislative priority of the current government.

8. Recognize the creation of the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights as the entity that will strengthen national capacities for the promotion and protection of Human Rights in Honduras, following up on recommendations made to Honduras as a result of having submitted the Universal Periodic Review of Human Rights to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations in Geneva, and coordinate and harmonize the cooperation and support of the United Nations and other international organizations to strengthen public policies and national capacities to ensure full respect for human rights in Honduras. In the same vein, the Honduran presidency has asked the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights of the UN to install an office in Honduras.

The new Ministry of Justice and Human Rights seems to be well intentioned, but ineffectual. It makes pronouncements, but not policy. As an example, the Minister, Ana Pineda, denounced the new wiretapping bill being considered by Congress as going too far and violating Hondurans rights to privacy. This did not trigger a reconsideration of the bill, which is expected to pass unchanged this week. Congress basically ignored her.

9. The Compliance Commission will consist initially of the foreign ministers of Colombia and Venezuela, who will assume office after the signing of this agreement by the President of the Republic of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo Sosa and former President, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, and as witnessed by the Presidents of Colombia and the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Juan Manuel Santos and Hugo Rafael Chavez Frias.

The Compliance Commission is a purely ornamental body, having no actual power to enforce the Accord. They can only shame non-compliant parties through public exposure. The body of the agreement in another section states that the parties may add other countries to the Compliance Commission by mutual agreement.

All of this was accomplished without the United States, whose State Department has remained silent about the mediation efforts being carried out by Presidents Santos and Chavez.

Indeed, the US State Department has been decidedly unhelpful in pursuing mediation, having called several times in the last month, as the mediation was being carried out, for the OAS to immediately return Honduras to full membership. In the end, Arturo Valenzuela, who is stepping down as Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs said this was a very positive step because it showed they were overcoming their deep divisions and it recognizes the legitimacy of the Lobo Sosa government.

This accord brings certainty to Honduras' return full OAS membership.

What it will mean for reconciliation within Honduras remains to be seen. Does Porfirio Lobo Sosa have the political influence in his own party, let alone in the Liberal Party, to encourage support and follow through? Will the Frente, or a significant enough portion of it, take up the offer to become a political party, and what will happen to those elements of the Frente that do not wish to do so? Will anti-Zelaya forces be able to resist the urge to bring the same (or variant) charges again, once Zelaya is back in the country?

Canahuati Shamed?

Adolfo Facussé, head of the National Industrial Business Association (Asociación Nacional de Industriales, ANDI), started a rumor Monday that Mario Canahuati was going to resign as Foreign Minister.

Facussé told the press this was because Canahuati was distressed over not being included in the secret meetings between Lobo Sosa, Hugo Chavez, and Juan Manuel Santos. He said it was embarrassing for Canahuati to not be included in the meeting, when the Foreign Ministers of Venezuela and Colombia were. Instead, Arturo Corrales, Lobo Sosa's planning minister, participated.

"Don Mario Canahuati for respect and his own dignity, should resign from his position,"

Facussé told the press.

He further suggested that the Lobo Sosa government should respect Canahuati and if he didn't have the President's confidence as Foreign Minister, perhaps Lobo Sosa would appoint him to manage soliciting foreign investment. Facussé pointed out that Mario Canahuati was the former head of the Honduran Council of Private Business (Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada, COHEP).

Why is Facussé trying to create a breach between Lobo Sosa and Mario Canahuati when there is none?

Perhaps it is because both he and Canahuati were backers of Micheletti, who just warned about the dangers of meeting that supposedly shamed Canahuati. Maybe he's warning Canahuati of business's unhappiness with Lobo Sosa's policies. Maybe its just that they were business buddies. We don't know.

Facussé specifically suggested Canahuati be put in charge of the "Honduras is open for business" conference to be held next week in San Pedro Sula. He took the opportunity to criticize the list of invited companies and individuals saying it was heavy on the industries with things to sell to Honduras and light on investors.

Facussé seemed not to know that Canahuati's Foreign Relations Ministry is in charge of the event and was responsible for the invitations.

In any case, Canahuati said he's not resigning and supports Lobo Sosa.

Honduras and the OAS: The Plot Thickens

The issue of what to do about Honduras will come up again at the next OAS General Assembly in early June. As readers will recall, Honduras has failed to fulfill the requirements set by members of the OAS opposed to readmission. Most discussed has been the failure to find a way to dismiss politically motivated charges against former president José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, which would allow him to return to the country. This has come even to overshadow the concerns expressed about continued human rights abuses in post-coup Honduras.

Porfirio Lobo Sosa asked again on April 15, for the Supreme Court of Honduras to do what is necessary to make it possible for Manuel Zelaya Rosales to return to Honduras.

Jorge Rivera Aviles, the Supreme Court Chief Justice, says that if it does, it will just be "a happy coincidence", not because of Lobo Sosa's pressure on the court.

This battle has been going on since Lobo Sosa took office in January 2010. Porfirio Lobo Sosa has done all he can to make it possible for Zelaya to return, but ultimately it is beyond his power. He cannot command the Supreme Court, and so far, they've declined to cooperate with him.

It took the negotiations of Arturo Corrales, once negotiator for Roberto Michelleti, and currently head of Lobo Sosa's Strategic Planning Commission, and the brainstorming of a legal team, to find a legal way the court can dismiss the remaining charges: nullification.

Here's what will happen next with the Zelaya legal case:

--on or about April 20, a three judge appeals panel of the Supreme Court will rule on an appeal by the Public Prosecutor's office to reinstate the arrest warrants for Zelaya that have previously been vacated.

--after that, there's another motion pending before Judge Chinchilla to dismiss the two remaining charges because of procedural errors by the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubi.

(The procedural errors? Under Honduran law, Rubi had to formally notify Zelaya he was the subject of an investigation, and that notification had to occur before any charges were filed. Rubi filed charges in July 2009, just after the coup, without ever notifying Zelaya. This seems to be the core of the argument for nullification of the charges.)

--if the charges are dismissed, Rubi's office can be expected to appeal, prolonging the case for up to two more weeks.

In any event, if the Supreme Court does not drag its feet again by mid-May it should have heard all the possible appeals and ruled definitively and finally on the charges against Zelaya, either dismissing them or allowing them to go to trial.

There is a lot more now riding on what Rivera Aviles claims would only be a "happy coincidence" being the outcome.

After meeting in Colombia with Lobo Sosa, and with Zelaya and representatives of the Frente de Resistencia yesterday, Hugo Chavez has said that if Lobo Sosa can deliver on the long-demanded dismissal of charges against Zelaya, then he will support reintegration of Honduras in the OAS.

He has promised both Lobo Sosa and Zelaya he would work to bring about a resolution favorable to both sides. Juan Barahona, on behalf of the Frente de Resistencia, has said they put their trust in Chavez as a mediator as well.

There are still, of course, things that making it possible for Zelaya to return will not heal.

At the same OAS General Assembly, the government-sponsored Truth Commission (which isn't really a truth commission because its charter fails to conform to the UN standards for truth commissions), will brief OAS members on the contents of its final report.

Eduardo Stein said the report will be submitted without the help of Zelaya, who refused to give testimony to the commission, because they have a large body of press releases and statements by members of his cabinet to the press to confirm what happened, and that those statements are consistent with other reports made to the commission.

Contradicting himself, he noted that there were some topics where only Zelaya could provide information about his intentions and actions, and he regretted that Zelaya had refused to cooperate.

So, the Truth Commission, which has been touted as providing a means to reconcile Hondurans divided by the coup, is not likely to add much forward momentum. And the human rights situation in Honduras has not been improving. Both the US State Department and the Inter-American Human Rights Commission have recently condemned deteriorating human rights conditions in Honduras.

But it is probably a reasonable bet that Honduras will return to the OAS soon-- that is, if the Supreme Court delivers its "happy coincidence".

Chavez, Lobo, and readmitting Honduras to the OAS

News reports have appeared claiming that Honduras will be reintegrated to the OAS following a meeting between Hugo Chavez and Porfirio Lobo Sosa in Cartagena, Colombia.

AFP's story probably hews closest to the truth: talks were held, that is true. But nothing really has changed, so press coverage claiming a breakthrough would appear to be premature. As AFP correctly described the situation

Zelaya is currently in exile in the Dominican Republic, and will not return to Honduras until he is guaranteed immunity from legal action. His return is a condition for the OAS to re-admit Honduras.

What that means is that someone with the ability to do so would have to guarantee that the remaining charges against Zelaya were dismissed. Lobo Sosa, the head of the executive branch of government, cannot make such a guarantee, because the charges are being defended by the judicial branch.

While the most obvious political charges against Zelaya were recently dismissed, there remain charges on which the court still demands Zelaya be tried. Lobo Sosa has made overtures before, and has been briskly pushed back by Honduran factions who want the OAS to back down.

The head of the Honduran Supreme Court Jorge Rivera Aviles, recently reiterated that the judicial branch-- which is, we re-emphasize, not controlled by Lobo Sosa-- thinks it has done enough to satisfy the international community:

“From my point of view all the requirements for Honduras to be in the OAS have already been completed...Honduras should be reintegrated without greater conditions (since it has complied) with the aspects of national reconciliation and government respect for human rights, to give accounts to international organizations and many other activities since Lobo took office”.

Speaking specifically to the question of Zelaya still being under threat of trials that, given the extreme nature of his removal from office and the open hostility of the courts to him, we might assume will be somewhat less than fair, the head of the Supreme Court continued:

"He can come anytime, he doesn't have any warrant for arrest pending".

For pro-coup Honduras, this is reality, even if the rest of the world sees things otherwise.

A call for charges to be dropped against ex-President Zelaya is reinterpreted: see, we won't arrest him (at least right away) so why should he be afraid to come back?

So it seems wildly unlikely that Lobo Sosa will shift their position, especially not on the promise that Hugo Chavez-- reviled by the Honduran right-- would then change his position.

And notice that in fact, Chavez has not changed his position. Santos may have managed a surprise meeting with Lobo Sosa, but the "agreement" is that Lobo Sosa needs to deliver the immunity from prosecution which has always been the requirement for readmission to the OAS.

The positive spin on the most recent meeting comes from two sources: Porfirio Lobo Sosa and the president of Colombia, Juan Manuel Santos. Both are, quite obviously, interested parties who would like to get credit for changing the situation.

The Chinese publication People's Daily (in English) quotes Lobo Sosa as its main source, saying

"I am very glad the meeting has initiated the incorporation of Honduras into regional bodies like the OAS".

Santos, on the other hand, sounded more cautious even in this highly spun story:

"I hope this meeting will become a further step toward the final settlement of Honduras' problem with the OAS and that the OAS will accept Honduras' return as a full member of that organization."

A "further step" is a long way from "initiating incorporation" in OAS. Indeed, coverage in the English-language Colombia Reports is more measured:

The Honduran president said he agreed to allow ousted former leftist President Zelaya to return to the country with immunity from prosecution. This is a condition of the readmission of Honduras to the OAS.

The problem remains that the will to acknowledge that the coup of 2009 was a coup is absent in Honduras. So various parties cling to their claims of corruption-- not that these would, in fact, have justified a coup.

Lobo Sosa has pretty successfully distanced himself from the coup, but does so, among other things, by pushing to the forefront the Supreme Court-- still the same group that claimed it was entirely legal in documents widely believed by anti-coup activists to have been post-dated and essentially doctored. And the head of the Supreme Court has no intention of taking one step more to facilitate international recognition. In fact, he said earlier this week that

"the President, Porfirio Lobo, has made enormous efforts and has attended to many international requirements, in such a way that to the extent that he acceeds, they ask even more".

Time, Rivera Aviles thinks, to draw a firm line in the sand.

More egregious than his refusal to recognize the difference between immunity from prosecution and removing an arrest warrant, even if it is not what the press or the three presidents meeting in Cartagena talked about, is River Aviles' claim that the Lobo Sosa government has met international demands on human rights.

It just is not so. But then, in Rivera Aviles' circles-- and most likely in the view of Lobo Sosa as well-- it is just unfair of the rest of the world to insist on such conditions for Honduras, because the people being beaten in the streets, tear gassed, and hit with water cannons, asked for it by not accepting the iron fist of control exercised over their country.

Impunity on Impunity

Porfirio Lobo Sosa announced last Friday that he has invited the members of the UN Commission Against Impunity to come to Honduras.

But the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubí says not so fast. "Nobody from outside can tell us what we have to do," Rubí told reporters on Monday.

"When you bring a commission, you are having doubts and really, this country is not for having doubts; we who believe in its institutions; we who believe in its functionaries, we who believe in the country; we have to believe in ourselves, the Hondurans."

So what is this thing that Rubí finds so threatening, so un-Honduran?

The immediate precedent is the Comisión Internacional Contra la Impunidad en Guatemala (CICIG). It was established in 2008 to investigate the existence of clandestine security apparatus in Guatemala and facilitate dismantling it. It assists the Public Prosecutor's office, and may participate as a complementary prosecutor, but always in conformity with the Code of Criminal Procedures in Guatemala, as part of its mandate. It makes recommendations about new public policies and procedures that would help with the eradication of these clandestine security organizations, and that will help strengthen Guatemala's capacity to protect the basic human rights of its citizens.

Lobo Sosa outlined similar tasks for such a commission in Honduras. He said the commission would investigate the clandestine security apparatus that's operating in Honduras, train prosecutors and police, and make recommendations about modifications to laws to help disarticulate such clandestine groups.

Proceso Digital expands on reasons to reject such a commission, in unsourced comments following their quotations of Rubí's reactions. According to them, it is all a Zelayista plot to get rid of Luis Rubí, the Supreme Court, the Human Rights Commissioner, and everyone in Congress who voted, twice, to remove Zelaya. Oh, and if that's not enough, it is also, according to them, Hugo Chavez's strategy which he's pushing through the ALBA countries in the OAS.

Hmm. Porfirio Lobo Sosa is a Zelayista? Who knew?

And if the Supreme Court is a target, why is the Supreme Court said to be in favor of it?

The actual inspiration seems somewhat more local. Alvaro Colom, President of Guatemala, told the press in Guatemala that both Honduras and El Salvador were preparing petitions to ask the UN for a Commission Against Impunity such as Guatemala already has.

Any such commission in Honduras will have a difficult task probing clandestine activities of the military, police, and politically powerful. Part of the challenge is that investigating impunity in the security forces is likely to lead directly to drug traffickers.

The Guatemalan commission has sparked push-back by elites who find themselves under investigation and prosecution. In June the head of its commission resigned, citing attacks by the powerful and lack of support for his work. This only months after giving press comments on the successes of the commission, which certainly seemed impressive: about 2,000 policemen (15 %) were removed from the force, an attorney-general and ten other prosecutors were fired, and three justices of the Guatemalan Supreme Court lost their office. The commission saw 130 individuals jailed following successful prosecution.

It is clear that uprooting impunity in the security forces cannot be done entirely from within the system in Honduras; it will need the backing of the international community to succeed.

But that's not going to happen if Rubí and the others who believe they gained impunity for the coup and its aftermath through congressional amnesty have anything to say about it.

Honduras Un-Invited to Spain?

In a story published on its website half an hour ago, La Confidencial of Spain reports that Miguel Ángel Moratinos, Spanish Minister of External Affairs "has had to rescind" the invitation previously issued to Porfirio Lobo Sosa to attend the Cumbre América Latina y el Caribe-Unión Europea (EU-Latin American and Caribbean Summit). The report says

reliable sources affirmed to this paper that Moratinos will withdraw the invitation to Lobo to attend the summit planned for Madrid the next 17th and 18th.

The reason? As also reported by Bloomberg Businessweek, a number of influential Latin American governments have promised to skip the Spanish summit if Lobo Sosa were there:

Many nations share “unease” over recognizing Lobo, who was elected last November in a vote overseen by a coup-installed government, and will not attend the Madrid summit, Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa said yesterday in Argentina.

Specifically, as we previously noted, the countries that make up UNASUR are declining to join Porfirio Lobo Sosa, who they do not recognize, in a setting that is being used in Honduras as a propaganda point, misrepresented as evidence of normalization of diplomatic relations with other participating countries.

El Confidencial observes that

[Rafael] Correa, as well as the Brazilian leader Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chávez, and the Bolivian Evo Morales, consider that Lobo won the elections without democratic legality having been re-established, after the ex-president Manuel Zelaya were overthrown the 28th of June of 2009 by the military coup that pulled Roberto Micheletti into power in an interim form. Argentina and Paraguay also do not recognize Lobo as legitimate.

The Bloomberg Businessweek story, citing an emailed statement from Honduran Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati , said that Honduras would "cut funding for diplomatic relations with countries that boycott the May 18 European Union-Latin America and Caribbean Summit".

Apparently the threat was ineffective.