DESA: Fraud and Corruption

On the third anniversary of Berta Cáceres' murder, MACCIH and the UFECIC-MP (Unidad Fiscal Especial Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad del Ministerio Publico) announced new legal cases against 16 individuals, brought as a result of studying the approval and license allocation processes for the Agua Zarca dam on the Gualcarque river in Honduras. 

So far in the Honduran press, only El Tiempo and Proceso Digital reported it, both digital publications.  The major Honduran print papers have ignored it.

The combined forces of MACCIH and UFECIC-MP chose to investigate the more than 40 complaints about irregularities in concessioning and licensing hydroelectric projects that affect the Lenca people, complaints lodged by Berta Cáceres before her murder, complaints about DESA and the Agua Zarca dam. Ana Maria Calderón, the Corruption coordinator in MACCIH, noted that the implications of their findings have a much larger application:

In light of today's findings, the Mission suggests that the [Government of Honduras] review the remaining active contracts and the norms that regulated them, because to continue with this energy strategy could produce an unbalance in the market and bring about the bankrupcy of ENEE;  its possible that all the contracts tied to renewable sources were let in the same way [as this one].

If all of the many contracts and licensing processes underwent the same irregularities as this contract, it has implications for the future viability of ENEE, the national electric company, which currently runs at a loss.  The Honduran government is due to tell the IMF how they plan to bring this entity to profitability sometime in the next three months.  With more contracts authorized like the DESA one, they probably cannot.

The investigation found that DESA was created in 2009 by two brothers (the Abate Ponces) and almost immediately Roberto David Castillo Mejia was its de-facto representative. 

But Castillo Mejia was also employed full time in ENEE, in the department that reviews and allocates contracts for hydroelectric projects. Very convenient for DESA.

He obtained shares in the firm through a front company formed in Panama, called PEMSA, which had just two shareholders, Castillo Mejia and Carolina Lizeth Castillo Argueta.  Castillo Argueta was the lawyer for the ENEE workers' union at the time, but became DESA's lawyer as well and signed the contract for DESA.  She signed instead of Castillo Mejia to cover up his conflict with his role in PEMSA.  DESA has another investor, Inversiones Jacaranda, owned by the Atala Zablah banking family.

Both David Castillo Mejia and Carolina Castillo Argueta worked directly for the head of ENEE, Roberto Anibal Martinez Lozano, who signed the contract with DESA on behalf of ENEE.  He signed the contract despite knowing DESA was not on the list of ENEE approved contractors (a prerequisite to any ENEE contract).  He signed without investigating how a front company with no technical or financial assets was going to carry out this somewhat tricky contract.  In short, it was an illegal contract, but he signed anyway, even over objections from his legal department.

Fraud happened in the approvals process at a number of government institutions.  SERNA, the environmental resources agency, for example, approved the feasibility study on December 16, 2009, without bothering to locate the land on which the project would take place, or determining who owned that land, or confirming approvals from the municipality where the dam would be located, all abnormalities that the legal department at SERNA noted.  Yet they too recommended approval of the project.

The feasibility study itself was improperly done.  It was submitted to SERNA on October 5, 2009, just 24 hours and 5 minutes after ENEE gave its permission.  Nevertheless, SERNA and Castillo Argueta signed a contract on January 22, 2010 that gave DESA the use of national water.  This contract was signed despite a negative recommendation from the National Energy Council, which noted that DESA did not meet the legal requirements for a contract.

SERNA issued a "Category 2" environmental license for the Agua Zarca project on March 24, 2011.  MACCIH and UFECIC-MP allege the project was miscategorized in favor of DESA, giving them cheaper license fees. The environmental license required a two-year study of the amount of water flowing in the river, and the law specifies that is two years after the water use contract is issued. The study was supposed to contain two years of data on the volume of water flowing in the Gualcarque river.  It was supposed to be current data.

Instead the study contained data from a 2003 proposal previously rejected by ENEE, that Carolina Castillo Argueta had access to because the union she represented was supposed to partially finance the rejected project.

Less than two years after the water use license was approved on January 22, 2010, SERNA issued an environmental approval for the Agua Zarca dam.  They had to know the data included were falsified.

The 2003 project DESA plagiarized asked to construct a 6 MW power plant, and DESA's original request was also to build a 6 MW project. 

In August of 2010, DESA received a concession for a 14.5 megawatt project. 

On May 14,  2011, DESA asked for, and received an increase to 21.5 megawatts. 

DESA said it would add a third turbine to generate this power, but MACCIH suggests that it's not clear the river actually has enough water to support a third turbine, or even fully support the second turbine. Without a constructed project producing power using the proposed model, it's difficult to judge the alleged improvements. 

An economic analysis suggested the proposed investment in a third turbine was intended to increase the total investment DESA had in the project, which would then increase the purchase price ENEE would have to pay for their electricity. 

Higher investment ==> higher purchase price in ENEE's pricing models.

All in all, not only does the project have the problems we knew with community consultation and approval; as an engineering project, its feasibility was uncertain. The record of approvals and contradictory roles of individuals involved is a clear indication of violation of law. And it seems the main purpose in setting the project up the way it finally was approved and was to be implemented might have had more to do with extracting more government money, than with any actual power production.

The sixteen individuals charged in this case are:  Francisco Rafael Rivas Bonilla, Julio Alberto Perdomo Rivera,  Catarino Alberto Cantor López, Luis Eduardo Espinoza Mejía, Anna Lourdes Martinez Cruz, Aixa Gabriela Zelaya Gomez, Dario Roberto Cardona Valle, Mauricio Fermin Reconco Flores, José Mario Carbajal Flores, Oscar Javier Velásquez Rivera, Roberto Anibal Martínez Lozano, Roberto David Castillo Mejia, Julio Ernesto Eguigure Aguilar, Raul Pineda Pineda, Carolina Lieth Castillo Argueta, and Saida Odilia Pinel. 

They now stand accused of Abuse of Authority, failing to fulfill the requirements of a public official, falsification of documents, negotiating in a way not compatible with holding public office, and fraud.

Congressional Corruption Part 1

Lest we think that all is well in the Honduran Congress as a deliberative body, recent news reports in Honduras document widespread corruption in the Honduran Congress; everything from the way money ends up back in Congressperson's pockets to the way laws as published in the official newspaper, are completely different than what was voted on in Congress.  Corruption here is widespread, and deep.

The OAS mission to support the fight against corruption and impunity in Honduras (MACCIH for its acronym in Spanish) found out this week that the problem in Honduras with impunity and corruption isn't that they don't know how to follow the internationally recommended ways to combat corruption and write a legal framework that combats corruption.  Since the 2009 coup numerous panels have made legislative suggestions that have been totally ignored. Honduran legislators, the Judicial and Executive branches have have deliberately ignored them for a reason.

The problem in Honduras continues to be that the government at all levels, from the legislative, to the Judicial, and the Executive branches, is rife with corruption.   They actively choose to write legislation that facilitates corruption and impunity.  No amount of MACCIH investigating crimes and suggesting model legislation will fix that.  But only now is MACCIH waking up to the reality of Honduras.

This week the Honduran Supreme Court dismissed the first  corruption case that MACCIH brought to trial.  This was the case of the five Congresspeople who were paid off by the Executive branch for changing their allegiances to the National Party.  In return they were paid using funds Congress allocated to an NGO for social programs.  The money, some $300-$400,000 ended up in the private bank accounts of these five Congressmen.

It was a well documented case that should have easily resulted in a conviction.  Instead, the Honduran Supreme Court threw one roadblock after another at the prosecution.  First, they refused the request to have the Congressmen arrested to await trial in jail.  Next they scheduled the first trial date to be the Dia de Innocentes (Innocents’ Day).  The Supreme Couirt judge postponed hearings time after time.

Then Congress acted, or maybe the corrupt leaders of Congress acted would be more precise.  All those leaders were, at the time, members of the National Party.  The lame duck Congress came back after New Years and passed a series of laws, among then on January 18th a new "Ley Organica de Presupuesto"(decreto 117-2017)  with some interesting clauses.  The new law, as written, takes away from the Public Prosecutor's office the right to pursue crimes related to the budget of Honduras, instead giving it to the Tribunal Superior de Cuentas (TSC).  The law particularly states that while the TSC is auditing any budget item, the judicial branch cannot act.  To rub MACCIH's face in it, they made the law retroactive.

Given the new law, the Supreme Court judge dismissed the case against the five Congresspersons because the Public Prosecutor's office had no standing to bring the case.  MACCIH works with the Public Prosecutor's office, not the Tribunal Superior de Cuentas.  Not only does this destroy MACCIH's ability to investigate and prosecute the crimes it was set up to pursue, but it also closes investigations it had open on over 60 Congresspeople, including the President of the Congress, Mauricio Oliva.

Article 16 of the law gave Congresspeople the right to request, administer, and spend public funds from any source (government, NGOs, etc) that are for community development, social aid, and the improvement of law and democracy.  This change in the law legitimates the transfer of funds to the five charged Congresspersons.

Article 131 of the new law authorized the Tribunal Superior de Cuentas (TSC) to audit the use of these funds, specifically funds from 2006-2018, retroactively.  It gives the TSE 3 years to perform the audit of those years and only when it is done, and publishes its report, will changes be adduced and filed against anyone.  No criminal charges can be filed against anyone on these grounds while the TSC is investigating and writing its report.  Nor can civil charges be filed.

These changes passed with 69 votes for, and only 2 against, with 11 abstentions.  The changes shut down MACCIH's investigations and ability to bring charges against this kind of financial corruption.

Maccih investigating Porfirio Lobo Sosa

The spokesperson for the Misión de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MACCIH), Juan Jimenez Mayor, told the listening audience yesterday on the TV program Frente a Frente in Honduras that MACCIH is investigating the accusations made during the trial of Fabio Lobo in the United States that his father, then President, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, took bribes from the Los Cachiros drug cartel to avoid extradition or investigation by the National Police.

The accusations against Lobo Sosa were made by Devis Rivera Maradiaga, one of the former heads of the Los Cachiros narcotics cartel in Honduras during Fabio Lobo's trial.

Jimenez Mayor backed off his initial statement a bit, saying that he wasn't indicating Lobo Sosa was guilty of anything, just that the accusation was being investigated.

Jimenez Mayor told Frente a Frente that MACCIH was also investigating accusations against ex-First Lady, Rosa Elena de Lobo and other connected people in the country.  He also mentioned the IHSS corruption case where he said MACCIH was particularly interested in the DIMESA case, which had the most important contract with Mario Zelaya and he hoped it would be brought to trial soon.
"Our focus is on networks of corruption, both public and private", Jimenez Mayor said.

MACCIH to investigate DESA, government contracts, funding

The Misión de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras (MACCIH) announced Thursday that it would begin investigating, not the murder of indigenous activist Berta Cáceres, but the funding and government contracts of DESA, the company building the Agua Zarca dam for possible corruption and money laundering.

Mission spokesperson, Juan Jimenez Mayor announced the OAS mission would look into DESA, how it got its government contracts for the Agua Zarca dam and ENEE electricity purchase, and how it grew from a company with less than $1000 in capital in 2009 to have over $17 million in 2014.  In particular, Jimenez Mayor said the Mission wanted to verify the source of the funds, and whether DESA was money laundering.

Another aspect of the Agua Zarca project that Jimenez Mayor said was interesting was the awarding of the original environmental license in 2010, and the enlarged project environmental license in 2011.  The latter, approved by Dario Roberto Cardona, then sub secretary of the Secretaria de Recursos Naturales y Ambiente (SERNA).  Jimenez Mayor noted that while Cardona was being prosecuted for issuing the expanded environmental license in 2011 without proper consultation with the indigenous communities around Agua Zarca, he wondered why the issuer of the first environmental license, then Minister Rigoberto Cuellar, was not being investigated for the same crime since the same problem exists with the first environmental license issued in 2010. 

Jimenez Mayor also pointed to Congress, and its approval of an electricity buying contract from DESA to ENEE that called for ENEE to purchase more electricity than initially agreed on.

DESA denies there was an increase in its electricity production licensed by Cardona, and maintains it properly consulted with the municipality through open meetings, and that ILO 169 has not been codified into Honduran law.

The Agua Zarca project remains suspended.  The recent withdrawal of two of the international funding agencies (the Netherlands Development Bank (FMO) and the Finland Fund for Industrial Cooperation (FINFUND)) has not resulted in its cancelation because much of the funding comes from the Banco Interamericano de Integración Económica (BCIE) which has not withdrawn its support.

MACCIH Begins Amid Corruption Allegations.

The OAS's Misión de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción en Honduras (MACCIH) will begin work in Honduras today with a working breakfast, and a meeting with President Hernandez.  It will do so without the required legal framework being in place in Honduras.

The OAS and the Government of Honduras had a showy signing of the MACCIH agreement in January in Washington DC.  Everyone acknowledged at the time that as a treaty, it still needed to be approved by the Honduran Congress to go into effect.  Yet the Office of the President of Honduras waited until last week to submit it to the Honduran Congress for approval, and Mauricio Oliva, the President of Congress, has just postponed the vote for a second time, to sometime next week, amid allegations that his party is offering a 12 million lempiras (about $5400 ) bribes to Congress members of opposition parties to vote for ratification of the agreement.

Outside of the National Party, none of the other political parties in Honduras have taken a stand on the approval of the agreement.  Many Hondurans, especially those that have been marching as the Indignados, are sceptical of the OAS mission.  They see it as a stalling attempt by their government to make it appear to the outside world that its working to correct corruption and impunity without actually doing anything.  Much of the MACCIH charter involves studies and recommendations, which then must be acted upon by already corrupt parts of the Honduran government, to correct their own corruption.

How ironic that the MACCIH mission will be beginning its work in Honduras today without the required Congressional ratification and amid allegations that the ruling party is offering bribes to vote for ratification of the treaty.  Not an auspicious start.

Can Honduras meet the certification goals of the Alliance for Prosperity?

Tiempo reported today that the newly passed US budget bill includes money for, and suggests the implementation of, a Comision Internacional Contra la Impunidad y la Corupción en Honduras (CICIH), something the indignados have been calling for since they began marching in May of this year.

Tiempo did not get it quite right. The bill does contain authorization of funding for a CICIH, should Honduras implement it, but does not suggest or mandate that Honduras do so nor does it set a cap on support for one, if implemented. It provides that if Honduras or El Salvador establishes an International Commission against corruption and impunity, funds from the Central American Regional Security Initiative (CARSI) can be used to support them if the House Appropriations Committee agrees after consultation.

Which is not to say that the bill has no policy implications for Honduras, and for US relations with it. House Bill 2029, which passed and was signed by President Obama, establishes the appropriations for the State Department, including the authorization language regarding the Alliance for Prosperity in the Northern Triangle of Central America.

In reaction to concerns about continuing migration from these countries, Congress bars the disbursement of 25% of the approved funds to the Northern Triangle countries unless the Secretary of State can certify that these governments are informing their population of the dangers of traveling to the southwestern border of the United States; are combating human trafficking and smuggling; have improved their border security; and are cooperating with the US government and governments in the region to facilitate the return, repatriation, and reintegration of those that do not qualify for refugee status under International law. 

A further 50% of the funds for the Alliance are embargoed until and unless the Secretary of Sate can certify that each government meets twelve other criteria. In the case of Honduras, we think the State Department has its work cut out for it.

First the Secretary of State must certify in writing that each government is taking effective steps to
"establish an autonomous public accountability entity to provide oversight of the Plan". Honduras does not currently have such an entity that we can identify.

Next the Secretary of State must certify that each government is combating corruption "including investigating and prosecuting government officials credibly alleged to be corrupt."

In Honduras, there are far more identified cases of corruption than the Public Prosecutor's office has chosen to prosecute, and it has not prosecuted the most flagrant cases involving high status individuals in the National Party (the current ruling party in Honduras).

The Secretary of State is also charged to certify that these governments, including Honduras, has taken steps to "implement reforms, policies, and programs to improve transparency and strengthen public institutions, including increasing the capacity and independence of the judiciary and the Office of the Attorney General".

Honduras has recently been signatory to an agreement with Transparency International and the Asociación para una Sociedad más Justa (ASJ) to promote and encourage transparency in the Honduran government.

There's a conflict between what Honduras agreed to do with Transparency International, and what it is doing with the Ley de Secretos Oficiales, which allows the Honduran government to arbitrarily and unilaterally make anything it wants unavailable to the public for up to 25 years, an action taken despite strong opposition from groups like the ASJ and its own government transparency watchdog, the Instituto de Acceso a la Información Publica. In June of 2015 the Instituto de Acceso a la Información Publica issued a resolution ordering the Honduran Congress to reform the law to follow Article 72 of the constitution and other laws related to human rights and other agreements Honduras has entered into regarding transparency. To date, the Honduran Congress has refused to amend the law.

Honduras has taken baby steps towards training the judiciary and the office of the Public Prosecutor to better be able to do their jobs. While there's been a large financial investment in training, there is little to show for it. The Honduran government has agreed to implement the OAS sponsored MACCIH, but it largely shaped this program into yet another advisory group that will propose changes to the judiciary and Public Prosecutor's office. The current President and Congress have ignored at least four sets of recommendations for changes to the judiciary since the 2009 coup and we don't see any reason to expect the outcome this time will be different.

The Secretary must further certify that civil society organizations and local communities are consulted during the design of projects, and participate in the implementation of them. The lack of such consultation has been a constant concern for indigenous and rural communities faced with mining, hydroelectric, and other government approved projects.

Another certification required by the bill is that the Honduran government is taking effective steps to "counter the activities of criminal gangs, drug traffickers, and organized crime." 

Here the government of Honduras has a mixed record.  On the one hand, it has somewhat improved the national homicide rate, bringing it down to about 60 homicides per 100,00 population this year.  It has made numerous arrests of gang members and members of organized crime, but has successfully prosecuted none of them to date.  All high level members of organized crime in Honduras have been extradited to the United States for trial on charges here.  Extortion is rampant, kidnapping for ransom is on the rise, and mass murder, in which four or more people are killed in a single incident, is on the rise. Drug use within Honduras is increasing as well.

Another certification deals with the government taking effective steps to "investigate and prosecute in the civilian justice system members of military and police forces who are credibly alleged to have violated human rights, and ensure that the military and police are cooperating in such cases".

In theory this is already true under the Ley del Ministerio Publico of 1993.  However, the Public Prosecutor's office has to choose to prosecute the case, and has a miserable success record in court.

The Secretary of State will have to certify that the Northern Triangle governments are taking effective steps to "cooperate with commissions against impunity, as appropriate, and with regional human rights entities."  In Guatemala, the Public Prosecutor's office was slow to accept the help and guidance of its Comisión Internacional Contra la Corrupcion y la Impunidad (CICIG).  Honduras and El Salvador currently don't have such International commissions. Although there is sentiment in both places to establish them, that sentiment is just not in either current government.

Honduras recently boycotted a series of InterAmerican Human Rights hearings on judicial independence and the corruption of government institutions (see the videos of the hearings from October 22, 2015 on the linked page). Its absence was notable, and noted by the court.  It has, to date, ignored the finding of the InterAmerican Court that Honduras violated due process in dismissing three justices and a magistrate in 2010 for having opposed the 2009 coup.  In October, the court ordered two of the judges and the magistrate reinstated or paid lost wages. The Honduran government has done nothing to date, not even acknowledge the finding.  Ignoring and boycotting are not evidence of cooperation with regional human rights organizations.

The Secretary of State must also certify that the government will "support programs to reduce poverty, create jobs, and promote equitable economic growth in areas contributing to large numbers of migrants."

The Honduran Congress is barely moving here. Historically National Party governments, like the current one, have increased, rather than decreased poverty in Honduras. This is visible both in the percentage of the population living in poverty, and in the GINI index recorded each year for Honduras. We've written about this trend before (here and here).

The Secretary of State will have to certify that the Honduran government is taking effective steps to "create a professional, accountable civilian police force and curtail the role of the military in internal policing".

One could not certify that for Honduras today.  Not only is there no viable mechanism for removing corrupt, crime-linked police officers (everything done to date has been inconsequential), and no will to do so, but the current government is expressly in favor of militarizing the police and abolishing the civilian police force by progressively defunding it in favor of increased funding to the militarized police force it is building up from scratch.  Honduras is therefore unlikely to take steps under its current government to comply with this condition of funding.

The Secretary of State will have to certify that the government of Honduras is taking effective steps to "protect the rights of political opposition parties, journalists, trade unionists, human rights defenders, and other civil society activists to operate without interference".

In the Honduras of today, reporters, trade unionists, human rights defenders, and members of the opposition party all regularly receive death threats via text messages.  Many of those threatened either quit, or get killed.  The Honduran police don't have the staff to pursue something as high tech as tracing a text message source. The Honduran military intelligence group probably could do this, since they effectively have a tap on all Internet and telephone connections in the country, but haven't done anything about it.  Opposition parties in Congress are shut out of the public debate of bills by the leadership.

The Secretary of State must certify that the governments of these countries, including Honduras, are  taking steps to "increase government revenues, including by implementing tax reforms and strengthening customs agencies". 

Finally, the Secretary must certify the government of Honduras is taking effective steps to "resolve commercial disputes, including the confiscation of real property, between United States entities and such government."

Given the situation on the ground, it should be difficult for the Secretary of State to certify the Honduras of today is taking effective steps to meet these criteria. Unless it makes changes, Honduras might not have access to the funding it thinks it is going to receive under this program.

Why the OAS MACCIH Will Likely Fail

Multiple articles (here and here, for example) appeared in the press Wednesday echoing what we have been saying in for some time: that the OAS proposal for a Mission de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras (MACCIH) seems designed to fail, given Honduras's, and more particularly Juan Orlando Hernández's, history of meddling in the judicial system.

The indignados marches formed the context and motivation when Juan Orlando Hernández proposed the Sistema Integral Hondureño de Combate a la Impunidad y Corrupcion (SIHCIC).  He made the proposal as an attempt to shut the indignados protests down.

At the same time he proposed a "national dialogue" to open up the process to improvement, but no part of the SIHCIC process involved actually generating concrete suggestions from the dialogues, and there was no actual legislative proposal or even a report resulting from them. 

Hernández chaired the first several meetings, with groups usually allied politically with him, then turned the entire process over to a congressman to oversee.

The SIHCIC proposal has five basic components:

• first, a support committee for the Public Prosecutor's office to include both Honduran and international jurists that would audit the actions of the Public Prosecutor's office and aid in the pursuit of corruption

• second, a similar support committee to oversee the Consejo de la Judicatura, the group that disciplines judicial misbehavior

• third, a group responsible for the security of judges and their families

• fourth, an observatory of the judicial system involving academic and civil society members

• fifth, a business integrity group that would promote transparency and ethical standards for businesses and could propose rules and legislation to support them.

The proposal suggests nothing about judicial independence. It keeps the existing balance of power, tilted extraordinarily strongly towards the executive branch, and in fact, would reinforce it. 

The indignados rejected this proposal precisely because it did nothing to further judicial independence.  They continued to call for the establishment of a CICIH along the lines of the CICIG which has been successful in Guatemala. 

However, some of the indignados, including a leader, Tomás Andino, believe that even a CICIH might not work.  Andino said:

Guatemala has a relatively greater independence of powers than Honduras, which does not function as a democratic state...Here, a U.N. commission would be embedded in a corrupt system.

Because the indignados and other groups refused to participate in Hernández' dialogue, given its closed nature and lack of a mechanism for incorporating any results of the dialogues into legislation, Hernández eventually asked both the OAS and UN for mediators and facilitators. 

The OAS sent John Biehl del Rio who met with many of the same groups that Hernández had, then met in turn with the indignados and other groups that had not participated in the dialogues.  However, he was partisan from the start.  He openly rejected the indignados' call for a CICIH and dismissed the opposition in Honduras in inappropriate ways. 

As a result of his recommendations the OAS instead proposed, and Juan Orlando Hernández accepted, the Mission de Apoyo Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad en Honduras (MACCIH), designed to take another two years to perform studies and make recommendations.

MACCIH, not unsurprisingly given John Biehl's antipathy for the indignados, parallels and expands on the SIHCIC proposal of Hernández.  It calls for the formation of a set of international judges and lawyers to advise the Public Prosecutor's office and provide technical support to the investigative services.  It uses the Centro de Estudios de Justicia de las Americas (CEJA) to write a series of reports and recommendations on the justice system in Honduras.  It invokes the OAS's Mecanismo de Seguimiento del Implementación del Convención InterAmericana contra la Corrupción (MESICIC) to evaluate and recommend legal changes necessary to fight corruption and bring Honduras into line with the Inter-American Convention against Corruption.  It also calls for the establishment of an observatory of the judicial system to monitor its progress.

A Woodrow Wilson Center report authored by Eric Olsen and Katherine Hyde pointed out nine weaknesses of the MACCIH proposal that, they say, "must be addressed if this and other efforts are to be more than mere window dressing".

For us the most relevant and pressing of their questions is this one, which we also have been asking:

The priority of the MACCIH seems to be assessment and recommendations for institutional reform.  There is little question that institutional reforms are needed, but I know of at least two internationally sanctioned, highly credible assessments of Honduras's law enforcement institutions and justice system in the last four years, and their findings and recommendations are very sound.  Yet the government of Honduras (both current and previous) failed to act on the vast majority of these recommendations.  The question is whether it is really necessary at this point to carry out additional costly assessments and evaluations and again develop reform proposals when much of the work has already been done.  Why not adopt the recommendations that have already been made by international bodies -- including ironically, the OAS just six months ago -- and get to work now.

We would go further and suggest that Juan Orlando Hernández himself, while head of the Honduran Congress, was one of those who "failed to act on the vast majority of recommendations" for judicial reforms. While head of Congress he initiated questionable procedures to remove four sitting Supreme Court justices because he didn't like their ruling on Model Cities. Why does anyone, including the OAS, think that suddenly this will change, that the Honduran government will now act to implement the suggestions?

The MACCIH proposal has won support from James Nealon, US Ambassador to Honduras, who immediately after its announcement tweeted his approval.  But Foreign Policy magazine called it "more like a tool to appease the masses rather than an effective tool for reform."  Carlos Ponce of Freedom House said recently:

"The solution is not making more reports, but bringing change to Honduras.  We’re not talking about India or Brazil but a small country with lots of potential — but a lack of will to change. The families in power are in bed with factions in the government that also control the media. Corruption is linked directly to political parties, so you have to change the power structure."

Nothing in MACCIH even seeks to addresses this fundamental problem.  Without a demonstrated "will to change" there is no reason to expect MACCIH to bring about meaningful change in Honduras and more than previous studies cited in the Wilson Center report have.

 Meanwhile, Judicial independence in Honduras and Corruption in Honduras were the topics of two hearings last week at the Inter American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR in English and CIDH in Spanish). 

The government of Honduras boycotted the hearings. That should give those supporting the MACCIH pause; is there any will to examine these basic questions?