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.

Who Needs Brazil? On to Asia...

Tiempo's coverage characterizes this is a "reorientation" of resources. La Tribuna quotes vice-minister Mireya Agüero calling this a "temporary closure".

But the Honduran papers are clear: the budget formerly used to maintain embassies in Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina will now be used to open commercial missions in India, Singapore, China, and Canada.

The ringer in there, of course, is Canada. Let's come back to that.

First, though, it is worth recognizing that Mario Canahuati, Foreign Relations Minister of Honduras, seems to be acknowledging that this is a response to the continued refusal of the UNASUR countries to recognize the Lobo Sosa government as legitimate.

Canahuati proposed that Honduras would maintain contact with South America via its embassies in Chile, Peru, and Colombia, the countries that have recognized the Lobo Sosa government. He is quoted as saying

"We cannot stop having relations with Latin America... it is better to have friends than enemies".

Tiempo, noting that the South American countries selected to have their embassies closed also reject readmission of Honduras into the OAS, says this is because

the country has not complied with certain requirements, among them the unconditional return of Zelaya without charges.

This is very much the way the issue is now portrayed in all media, Honduran and English alike. It is unfortunate, because it reduces the issue to personalization. It is of a piece with the lazy characterization of the resistance movement in Honduras as "Zelaya supporters", as, for example, the Economist does in a particularly bad article earlier this month.

Among the requirements that Honduras has not satisfied are some much more important ones. These have to do with investigating the human rights abuses that took place during the coup and under the de facto regime of Micheletti, and that continue to take place under the Lobo Sosa administration.

The mainstream media never really cared much to cover these stories. Just this month, Human Rights Watch issued a press release about threats to Leo Valladares, former ombudsman and the former president of the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights:

Valladares told Human Rights Watch that he has received intimidating phone calls, and noticed people monitoring his home and following him, after he questioned the increasing power of the Honduran military since the 2009 coup.

"The Lobo administration's inability to ensure that human rights defenders can do their job and express their views without reprisals is frustrating," said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. "If someone with Leo Valladares' experience and international exposure is getting serious, credible threats, it is crystal clear that the human rights community in Honduras is facing risks."

It does not appear that this story was covered by any major media.

Nor has there been major media coverage of the continuing violence in the Aguan river valley, where Lobo Sosa's government exacerbated a confrontation between campesino cooperatives and large landowners, injecting the military into the region. Nor has the mainstream media seen fit to acknowledge that gay, lesbian, trans-sexual and transgender people are at constant risk in Honduras, with apparent impunity.

Zelaya isn't the issue. He may be a symbol, but the issue is that with the coup d'etat, Honduras moved backward, and no country with influence has used it to promote redress, except those of UNASUR.

Which brings us back to the main topic here: the Lobo Sosa government has made a discovery. It doesn't need to be legitimate to return to business as usual, as long as there are countries clamoring for cheap labor and new markets for cheap and dangerous goods. Lobo Sosa's recent Asian trip apparently encouraged him to expect new investments from that sector.

And Canada. Reportedly, Canada is close to finalizing a Free Trade Agreement with Honduras. Canadian mining companies with interests in Honduras, like Goldcorp, are enjoying record profits.

Oh, Canada.

A (Millennium) Challenge for Honduras

The Washington Post today published an English-language version of press reporting from Honduras following the decision by the Millennium Challenge Corporation to postpone a decision on whether or not to include Honduras in the next phase of the program.

The story, by AP reporter Freddy Cuevas in Tegucigalpa, repeats claims made by the Lobo Sosa government attributing the MCC's decision to corruption that took place under the Zelaya administration:

"We lament this decision because it was based on an evaluation of the perception of corruption levels in the country. And it affects the people the most," said Maria Guillen, Lobo's chief Cabinet minister.

Guillen told reporters that the decision was "due to corruption detected in 2007, 2008 and 2009," though she did not elaborate.

Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati blamed "the previous government" and said "now Lobo has to taken on this burden (even though) he acted transparently."

Poor Lobo Sosa; an innocent victim of a retrospective economic coup by Manuel Zelaya.

Except that this storyline, so pleasing to the Honduran right wing, is not supported by anything said by the US Embassy or the Millennium Challenge Corporation. In fact, the MCC press release said that

“MCC recognizes the positive steps taken by the Government of Honduras, as well as its strong commitment to reform and reconciliation. We look forward to continued engagement with the Government of Honduras and future consideration of the country for a second compact.”

So what actually made Honduras unattractive to the MCC right now-- as opposed to in some mythical future when reconciliation (that word, again) is complete and reform (what reform?) has taken place?

Participating countries are evaluated every year by the MCC, which issues "scorecards" showing how they performed. The scorecards are issued for each fiscal year-- so a scorecard for FY (Fiscal Year) 2011 summarizes a year that began in calendar year 2010.

As we previously discussed, "control of corruption" was one of the few indicators where Honduras failed to meet the standard required in the "scorecard" released by the MCC in October of 2009 (covering 2008-2009), scoring in the 44th percentile among its peer group of countries. (A reorganization of the MCC website broke the original links to this document; all the cumulative scorecards can be found here.) But even so, Honduras actually met its goals in this category in 2009. That's why "control of corruption" was green on the lovely color graphic MCC uses to summarize performance.

(In contrast, the two areas where Honduras failed to meet the criteria in FY 2009 stood out on the scorecard in bright and alarming red: "rule of law" and "fiscal policy".)

In the absence of any clear statement from MCC about where Honduras might have gone wrong-- other than that little coup thing and continuing violations of human rights, of course-- it is useful to simply glance over the scorecards from FY 2005 to FY 2011, covering data from 2004 to now.

"Fiscal policy" was already a major problem in the scorecard for FY 2005, when Honduras scored in the 47th percentile. Fiscal policy remained a problem consistently over the entire history of Honduras' participation in the MCC Compact from 2005 to now. Honduras score dropped to the 30th percentile for FY 2007, rose to the 37th percentile in FY 2008, to the 43rd percentile in FY 2009, and to the 44th percentile in FY 2010. The most recent scorecard (for FY 2011) shows a major erosion, back to the 40th percentile.

Fiscal policy is the only category in which Honduras consistently missed the MCC's targets. It seems much likelier that the decision of the MCC was based on this consistent inability to meet the expectations of the Corporation. But two other indicators shifted back and forth between acceptable and unacceptable: "rule of law" and "control of corruption".

"Rule of law" was marginal-- in the red in FY 2005, back into the green in 2006 where it stayed until FY 2008 (2007-2008, the year that political conflict that ultimately led to the coup began to be really visible). In the 2010 scorecard covering 2009-2010, 'rule of law' was again scored as a failure, which makes sense considering this covered the period of the coup d'etat and de facto regime.

"Control of corruption", the measure that the Lobo Sosa government wants to blame for the failure of MCC to renew Honduras, was an issue in FY 2008, improved in FY 2009 sufficiently to be scored in the green, and then in FY 2010 and FY 2011 reached its lowest point, well within the red (falling to the 44th and 45th percentile). But these results cover the period from 2009-2011: that is, a period when the Lobo Sosa government and its predecessor, the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti, were in control for the majority of the time.

It is not surprising that the Honduran government would like to blame a scapegoat for this decision. It is unfortunate for them that the data available don't support their claim, and suggest a far simpler explanation: Honduras just didn't meet the economic expectations of what is, after all, a neoliberal economic institution.

But it would be great if the Washington Post could manage to pretend to do some actual reporting rather than simply giving print space to unexamined claims like those made by the Honduran cabinet ministers quoted in the article they chose to print.

Only Nightmares After All

It seems that Oscar Alvarez, Honduras's Security Minister, only dreamed he had intelligence that Nicaragua was training campesinos in the Bajo Aguan to be insurgent guerrillas, and that Nicaragua was arming said campesinos with thousands of AK-47s.

At least, that should be the only conclusion possible after Porfirio Lobo Sosa flatly denied that the Government of Nicaragua was participating in a scheme to train and arm Honduran campesinos as insurgents.

Lobo Sosa made his comments to the press after officiating at the graduation of the current class from Zamorano, the Agriculture school near Tegucigalpa, saying

"there is no evidence of any participation by the government of Nicaragua in training rebels to act in land disputes between campesinos and landlords in Honduras."

Oscar Alvarez's fantasy of Nicaraguan trained peasant insurgents began in the cabinet minister's meeting on November 22 when he told Lobo Sosa that he had intelligence that indicated there were armed campesinos in the Bajo Aguan and that Nicaraguans were training them.

Alvarez included a telling detail: there was a large arms cache of 1000 AK-47s, and he knew where it was.

Lobo Sosa went public with Alvarez's accusation on November 22, backing it as something known by police intelligence.

On November 24, Alvarez himself made press statements that repeated all the same elements, but backpedaled on claiming that the government of Nicaragua was behind it:

"The information that we have is that people coming out of Honduras have been moving to Nicaragua, supposedly to train....We've been informed that they've entered from Nicaragua, that they've entered, also, in shipping containers."

Alvarez said.

Unfortunately for the security minister, his claims did not gain wide support from his colleagues in the cabinet.

In fact, one of the security minister's targets actually was another cabinet ministry: the National Agrarian Institute (INA), headed by his colleague in Lobo Sosa's "government of reconciliation", Cesar Ham.

The local INA office was the target of a raid as part of the "security" operation seeking the non-existent arms caches in the Bajo Aguan, as we previously noted, without finding the promised fire arms.

Then an even more important cabinet colleague, Mario Canahauti, Honduras' Foreign Minister, asked for documentation of the claims of Nicaraguan government involvement:

"I need the documentation which permits me to guarantee we have the evidence, so as not to create a serious international problem for Honduras."

Nicaragua, of course, strongly denied training or arming any Hondurans.

Lobo Sosa backpedaled and said he never mentioned Nicaragua. And in fact, his remarks just said it was an adjacent country:

"we have all this located, including the places where they are training outside of Honduras; its a large quantity of arms that they have and we have to chase this down."

Now Lobo Sosa says there's no evidence of participation by the Nicaraguan government.

No weapons, no proof of Nicaragua's participation. But a Security Minister can dream......

Honduras back in SICA or, what about the bylaws?

The headlines in many newspapers across Central America, like this one from El Salvador's El Mundo, pronounced Wednesday morning that Honduras was "approved to reincorporate itself into SICA" (emphasis added).

But is that really true? The Presidents of all the Central American countries except Nicaragua met in El Salvador and reportedly issued a proclamation urging the OAS to rapidly reincorporate Honduras back into the OAS. That would be news, but of course, is not the same thing as being reincorporated into SICA.

There is also a claim that Honduras was readmitted to SICA as a fully functioning member yesterday, but interestingly there is no such announcement or resolution on SICA's website. [See below for updates on this point.]

The only posted result of the most recent SICA meeting makes no mention of the reincorporation of Honduras, and lacks a signature from the representative of Nicaragua. Maybe they're just not into transparency?

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega decided last night to reprimand the other Central American presidents for their "ridiculousness" in issuing the proclamation that Honduras was reincorporated in SICA.

In a speech broadcast Tuesday evening, Ortega dismissed his Central American colleagues as "ridiculous" and as "challenging Central American integration", the NOTIMEX news service reported.

Ortega also said Nicaragua does not recognize the reintegration of Honduras in SICA, and that any such resolution passed at the extraordinary session held in El Salvador on July 20 lacks legal validity because SICA resolutions require unanimity under SICA bylaws. Nicaragua did not vote for any such resolution. Ortega said the announcement by his colleagues violates the basis of the SICA treaty. He said he considers that his colleagues "did something ridiculous" because SICA has its rules and establishes consensus as the rule, and consensus "requires unanimity"; without it, "you simply cannot make such decisions".

We first pointed out this SICA bylaw problem when SICA Secretary General Juan Daniel Alemán Gurdián (a Nicaraguan opponent of the current government of that country) unilaterally declared that no resolution was necessary to reincorporate Honduras into SICA, and that it had never been suspended, patently ignoring the SICA resolution of June 29, 2009.

There was no reaction at the time from any member government, not even President Mauricio Funes of El Salvador, who Alemán accused of just "getting it wrong" for reporting that no consensus had been reached. Which, given that President Ortega would have to be part of any consensus, shows that Funes was correct and Alemán is, lets say, playing fast and loose with the truth.

Meanwhile, Mario Canahuati, the Honduran Foreign Minister, boasted today that he had "24 or 25" votes for Honduras's readmission to the OAS. Under OAS bylaws he only needs 22 votes, a two-thirds majority.

But Boz, in a comment on an earlier post, noted that the OAS normally operates with consensus. He predicted that until the vote could be 30-0 or 28-0 with the remaining countries abstaining, the OAS is unlikely to consider a motion to readmit Honduras.

The reason that SICA coming to a consensus about reintegrating Honduras is important, is that it is the group most likely to accept Honduras back first, for pragmatic reasons: the need for economic integration, negotiation over contested territorial limits in the ocean that can otherwise lead to seizing of fishing boats, and the like.

Boz mentioned such pragmatic considerations in his post earlier today on early reports of "formal reintegration" of Honduras in SICA. There, he argued that it was unlikely that the other Central American presidents would have acted in Ortega's absence, against his expressed position:

I have a hard time believing that the region's presidents, particularly Colom and Funes, would have done this without Ortega's knowledge. I think [Ortega] chose not to attend as a way to abstain from having to either vote in favor or against. That way he can continue his opposition at the OAS and elsewhere, which only has political consequences, while having Honduras back within the Central American community, which benefits the region's economic health.

And this sounds about right to us. But when the other presidents announced that they were in favor of full reintegration of Honduras into the OAS-- assuming that report is true-- Ortega would have had every reason to be outraged. Having arranged not to stand in the way of the necessary (for the people of Honduras, and the region) economic reintegration, while maintaining opposition to the political reintegration into OAS, he finds himself bypassed and blind-sided.

Which we expect will increase, not decrease, his vocal opposition to OAS reintegration. And it is not just Nicaragua, of course (although having one's close neighbor oppose this should rhetorically count for quite a bit).

As the rabidly pro-coup Honduran online Proceso Digital put it, "Even though Central America wants it, South America confirms blockade of Honduras":

from the South they sent a jar of cold water to get across to Tegucigalpa that they will not permit the country to return to the institutional system.

As always, it was incumbent on the aggressive Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa not to fail to take advantage of a visit with the open enemy of Honduras into which the secretary general of the OAS, José Miguel Insulza, has converted himself, to affirm that he will not permit the return of the country to the continental organization, unless it accedes to his desires to see imprisoned all those that removed from power his friend and partner José Manuel Zelaya.

Ecuadorian news media, while being far less colorful in their characterizations of the diplomats involved, basically confirmed that Correa told Insulza he was opposed to reintegration of Honduras in the OAS as long as those who participated in the coup enjoy impunity. The actual statement of Ecuadorian foreign minister Ricardo Patiño did not call for mass imprisonment, but it does call for justice:

"For Ecuador the return of Honduras to the OAS is not acceptable as long as there is no clear sanction or initiation of judgment against those responsible for the coup".

"We believe that it is a very bad precedent for democracy in the hemisphere that a country should carry out a coup d'Etat and organize elections in the next months, as if nothing had happened."

And so, if Boz is right in his assessment of the normal operating procedure of the OAS, it will be a long time before there is an agreement, because there is no indication that anyone in Honduras understands that they have to repudiate the coup, they have to take steps to rid the current government of the hangover coup appointees, and they have to do something substantive and believable about the impunity for the coup authors that was created by the passage of amnesty just before the Micheletti regime stepped down.

Why did the US reject three Honduran consuls?

The Spanish news agency EFE reports that the Honduran consuls of Los Angeles, Atlanta and San Francisco, Vivian Panting, Cecilia Callejas and Francisco Venegas, were refused accreditation by the US, for staying in their posts under the de facto regime after the coup d'Etat.

EFE cites vice minister Alden Rivera as saying the three "received a request that they change their migration status or leave the country within 30 days" during the de facto regime, to which they did not respond. EFE notes that as the US did not recognize the Micheletti regime, it considered the consulates closed, and thus, these individuals could no longer stay in the US as diplomats.

Honduran newspapers are covering the story somewhat differently.

El Heraldo leads with the dedication of Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati to personally denounce any "irregularity" detected in any of the US consulates. According to their story, the reason for the removal of the three officials was that they were doing personal business on the side.

Quoting vice-minister Alden Rivera, the story says that the US State Department has "begun to execute a new mechanism of evaluation to avoid diplomats of Honduras accredited in the US carrying out activities different from those of their functions". Proceso Digital emphasizes the same point, again quoting Alden Rivera: the US "is not going to permit in any case that a functionary would be accredited in a consulate and that he would not give services in that Consulate or that they dedicate themselves to another activity such as study, work, or conduct business".

This may well be true. But it is not clear that it has anything to do with these specific dismissals.

Buried deep in the Heraldo story, Foreign Minister Canahuati is quoted as saying

"I have said that I am going to share information about the way the diplomats are conducting themselves but at this moment I don't have any complaint, what has happened is that there are some functionaries that were renewed but the government of the United States does not want to accredit them because they simply adduce that they were working in the time of the Micheletti administration..."

"They will logically be removed from their positions but they simply were not accredited by the US, not for undue actions or incompletion of their duties."

Confused? you should be. Were the consuls in question conducting business on the side, not completing their duties, or acting as consuls for an unrecognized regime? You pick.

But wait, there's more!

Honduran congress member Marcia Facussé contradicts Mario Canahuati's explanation, arguing that these people cannot be tainted by associations with Micheletti because the US never recognized any Micheletti-appointed diplomats.

She has a point; however, it is a slippery one. And as an avid supporter of the coup, she is motivated to defend the regime it installed and not face up to the fact that this is another piece of collateral damage.

During the de facto regime, some Honduran diplomats went over to the side of Micheletti, so it is perfectly possible for there to be a diplomat from before the coup who nonetheless is unacceptable to the US now because of association with the Micheletti regime.

In a sense, the coup was a test for all the officials of the Zelaya government, and despite the fact that it created a horrific double-bind, when the consuls received notices from the US that their immigration status had changed, they had two choices. Not acting was not one of them.

Oops

Honduras was suspended from all participation in the Sistema de Integración Centroamericana (SICA) by a unanimous vote of its members on June 29, 2009.

Yesterday SICA held a summit of heads of state in Panama City, Panama. Major themes for discussion were economic integration, regional security, and the re-establishment of democratic institutions.

Absent was any mention of Honduras in the agenda of this group. Instead, it was widely reported that the reincorporation of Honduras would be discussed by the meeting of Foreign Ministers, being held in parallel.

The way it was supposed to work was that the Foreign Ministers would hash out the wording of the resolution and pass it along to the Summit, which would then approve it. Panamanian Vice President Juan Carlos Varela announced June 28 that there would be a consensus declaration at the end of the meeting. "Just about everything is closed (about the recognition of the Honduran government)," Varela said. Porfirio Lobo Sosa said it was a sure thing that Honduras would be reincorporated in the meeting. Mario Canahuati said by telephone, "Honduras is in SICA, it's signed."

It didn't happen.

At the end of the summit meeting, Mauricio Funes, the Salvadoran President who presided, expressed his disappointment at the lack of a resolution reincorporating Honduras. "We did not stamp the wording on the reintegration of Honduras," Funes told the press.

What this means is unclear. Many of the rights explicitly denied by the resolution of a year ago have been tacitly restored, such as access to BCIE loans. However, Honduras cannot currently participate in the finalization of the free trade agreement with Europe, or benefit from the joint purchase of medicines.

SICA will hold an extraordinary meeting in El Salvador on July 20, 2010, where Funes will again take up the formal reincorporation of Honduras.

Honduras is the new Cuba: Mario Canahuati

Mario Canahuati, Porfirio Lobo Sosa's Foreign Minister, is perhaps not very good at his job. His response to the fact that the reintegration of Honduras is not on the agenda of the OAS meeting in Lima, Peru, starting tomorrow, was to send a report to each of the 32 member countries demonstrating that Honduras has complied with all the international demands since June 28, 2009!

Canahauti's report lays out everything that has happened since the beginning of internal elections in 2008:

"It gives an account of where we've come to, everything we've done to get the international community to recognize us."

The report will be shared with the 32 current members of the OAS on Monday.

Canahuati told La Tribuna that the attitude of the UNASUR and ALBA countries was unacceptable, and he hoped that this report would change their mind.

Canahauti said that "today, after the document we sent, we expect a positive reaction."

If that doesn't result in what is hoped for,

"we will have to initiate a different attitude with respect to initiatives which are remote from the fundamentals and oriented towards damaging the country. We have to revise a little, our position and our strategy to continue."

Remarkably, his model is apparently that paragon of continued economic success: Cuba.

Cuba has been excluded from the OAS for 50 years, and its economy is still expanding, Canahauti told La Tribuna, and because of this the Honduran population should have confidence in the diplomatic gestures of the Chancellery.

Really? Cuba is the model? I don't think that's going to give the business community in Honduras more confidence in the government.

Canahuati is ignoring the uncomfortable truths that the international community has been telling him all along: that a coup is an interruption of democracy that requires corrective action.

He is selectively listening to the Lobo Sosa government's partners like Arturo Valenzuela, US Undersecretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, who says the return of Zelaya to Honduras is not important, instead of OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza, who is telling him that for many of the OAS member nations, it is important.

Canahauti isn't listening to the public statements of the UNASUR governments, who are being very clear that this is their main condition for considering the reincorporation of Honduras in the OAS.

Mr. Canahauti should know it takes a positive vote from two-thirds of the 32 member countries for Honduras to be reincorporated into the OAS. By the Lobo Sosa government's own vote count in May, Honduras only has about half the votes it needs to be restored. UNASUR, with 12 countries, represents more than half of the remaining votes necessary to restore Honduras.

"There exist a few important obstacles for the return of Honduras" said Insulza, the biggest of which is the impossibility of the return of Zelaya:

"The construction of the present Honduran government is based on the idea of national reconcilliation. The truth is I don't see how you can produce this reconcilliation when the principal protagonist of the crisis is prevented from returning to his country."

Insulza noted that there are many countries that see restoring Honduras to the OAS without Zelaya's return as "legitimating the coup that continues to administer justice."

This is the official position of UNASUR.

The other obstacle that Insulza mentioned is the firing of the judges by the Supreme Court:

"Those judges were fired from the Judicial branch for having the opinion that in their country there had been a coup d'etat, and that is unacceptable."

It is Insulza, as Secretary General of the OAS, who will guide the OAS to restoring Honduras when the political will is there, not Arturo Valenzuela, who appears to be as out of touch as Mario Canahauti in this process. Restoring Honduras is a political process. To get the necessary consensus, and achieve his goal, Canahauti should listen to Insulza, not Valenzuela.

Bitter Pill for Lobo Sosa

In a rare moment of candor, Porfirio Lobo Sosa admitted a setback in his program to get Honduras back to its pre-coup place in the international community. That would include reincorporation back into SICA, the Central American Integration System, and the OAS.

For weeks we've heard from the Lobo administration that that the process was proceeding ahead smoothly, and that they were confident that Honduras would be reincorporated back into SICA and the OAS early this summer, if not earlier.

The first evidence that this might all be bravado came when OAS Secretary General Miguel Insulza gave an interview to El Tiempo earlier this month, and revealed that the reincorporation of Honduras was not even on the program to be discussed at the June OAS meeting in Lima, Peru, as we reported at the time. In that interview Insulza revealed that many members of the OAS still had concerns, particularly about human rights in Honduras, and the continued pursuit of the political charges against Manuel Zelaya Rosales that prevent him from returning to Honduras, despite the Congressional amnesty bill. Insulza also mentioned that the verification commission appointed under the ill-fated Guaymuras Accords, made up of Ricardo Lagos and Hilda Solis, would have to return to Honduras and submit a report to the OAS before reincorporation could be discussed.

Now Porfirio Lobo Sosa tells us there's another problem.

Despite the best wishes of Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom and Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli, it looks like the reincorporation of Honduras back into SICA has hit a roadblock. In comments made to the press yesterday as he left an education event, Lobo Sosa said, "Look, it depends on what Nicaragua decides, but Honduras, with SICA or without SICA will move ahead, you don't have to lose hope about it." Lobo admitted that reincorporation into SICA depends on Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, who ducked the Saturday lunch where Honduras's reincorporation was supposed to be discussed. Nicaragua does not recognize Lobo's government as legitimate and has not re-established normal diplomatic relations with Honduras since Lobo's inauguration.

Ortega also, Tiempo reports, changed the agenda for the Wednesday meeting of the Central American Presidents in Guatemala; they will discuss the proposed economic treaty between Central America and the European Union. "Possibly Wednesday we will go to Guatemala to revise the free trade agreement with Europe," Lobo said, "although there was no opportunity to consult; its not certain if he [Ortega] will attend or that the meeting is confirmed."

Add to the uncertainty about whether this meeting will happen that Honduras's reincorporation into SICA is no longer on the agenda, and this is really bad news for Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

He and his Foreign Minister, Mario Canahuati, have been emphasizing that all of this was on track to happen soon, and that there were no obstacles to returning Honduras's international relations to normal. Looks like reality caught up with them.

Miguel Insulza told Tiempo on May 5 that Honduras would need to be reincorporated into SICA before the OAS could take up reincorporation into the OAS. As long as reintegration in SICA is deferred, so is consideration of returning to the OAS. And while that is a bitter pill for Lobo Sosa to swallow, it may be the medicine Honduras needs to stop ignoring the continued legacy of the coup.

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.

Not Automatic Afterall

Mario Canahuati, Honduras's Foreign Minister, said April 25 that the reincorporation of Honduras into the OAS was all but a done deal, that it should be automatic, and will happen this June at the OAS assembly in Lima, Peru. Miguel Insulza, the OAS Secretary General, just threw a bucket of cold water on Honduras's hopes for that meeting.

In an interview with the Honduran daily, El Tiempo, Insulza said

"It won't be resolved in the OAS assembly in Lima, but I also don't think it will take until December to resolve it. Most of the Foreign Ministers of the countries I've talked to don't want this general assembly in Lima, which will discuss important themes, to end up an assembly about Honduras ."

Insulza added, Tiempo reports, that setting up the Truth Commission is not the last thing Honduras needs to do before being readmitted to the community of nations.

"Tiempo Reporter: Is the installation of the Truth Commission a ticket whereby Honduras automatically is reincorporated in the OAS?

Insulza: Its one of the topics. At this point the issues raised mainly are: the clarification of issues of public interest such as the human rights issue, not necessarily the investigation of each case, but a better understanding of what the real situation of human rights and persecutions occurring in Honduras, and the issue of regularizing the situation of President José Manuel Zelaya."

Insulza also noted that the members of the Verification (not the Truth) Commission, Ricardo Lagos, and Hilda Solis, need to return to Honduras to evaluate all that has occurred, write a report, and present it to the Permanent Council of the OAS. This bucket of cold water on Canahuati's pronouncement that reincorporation into the OAS was automatic and would happen in June, is political reality, not the PR message Canahuati has been advancing.

Insulza's comments are no doubt tempered by the results of the UNASUR meeting just a few days ago. UNASUR is composed of the governments of the 12 countries of South America. Honduras was one of their topics of discussion. Only two of their member governments, Columbia and Peru, have recognized Porfirio Lobo Sosa as President of Honduras. The rest consider him an illegitimate President.

In that meeting, UNASUR appointed Ecuadorian President, Rafael Correa, its spokesperson to communicate to President Zapatero of Spain their unhappiness with his invitation of Porfirio Lobo Sosa to the May 18 meetings between the European Union and Latin America. In a letter addressed to Zapatero, UNASUR communicated that if Porfirio Lobo Sosa was invited, several of the member governments would boycott the meeting.

La Jornada, a Mexican newspaper, reports that President Lula of Brazil, wrote in a letter to Zapatero, that Lobo is moving forward with "reconciliation" via a "truth commission" to "establish the fiction of democracy, based on forgetting the crimes and pardoning the criminals", all the while putting down the popular Resistance by "selectively assassinating the leaders, independent journalists, and the violent eviction of struggling communities."

"The coup in Honduras is a threat to Latin America, it favors the re-articulation of the conservative right and militarism on the continent, strengthening policy of invasions, wars, interfering, criminalization and prosecution of social struggles, promoted by the government and sectors of American and world power.

Asked specifically about UNASUR and Lula by the Tiempo reporter, José Miguel Insulza said

"This has all the impact that the opinion of a member country has. We make decisions by consensus and naturally the opinion of Brazil is fundamental. Now President Lula spoke of not rushing, and that may mean some delay in reexamining the issue, but it does not mean a veto of the return of Honduras to the OAS."

No, its not a veto, but it does mean Insulza's job is much harder, since a consensus will be difficult if most of the UNASUR countries continue to oppose reincorporation under Article 22 of the OAS charter. Consensus according to Article 22, requires a two-thirds vote to approve readmission of a suspended government.

This is why Insulza said its not automatic, and its not on the agenda for the June OAS meeting.

The business of the Truth Commission is business

What does it mean when the most accurate English language reports about the aftermath of the Honduran coup come from the business media?

Not for the first time, Bloomberg has a clear and accurate story, and it even includes new information: citing Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati, the economic impact of the coup was a reduction of 6.6 percent of gross domestic product, equivalent to $930.6 million.

Bloomberg also manages to actually cite a Honduran against the coup without describing him inaccurately as a "leftist", a "Zelaya supporter", or any of the other terms used to diminish the authority of those opposed to the Lobo Sosa administration and to the international movement to artificially impose closure on Honduran society:

Coup opponents such as Andres Pavon, head of the Honduran Human Rights Defense Committee, say they fear the truth commission, headed by former Guatemalan Vice President Eduardo Stein, isn’t qualified and will whitewash the coup.

This is the crux of the matter. And it does matter: to the extent that a major constituency in Honduras sees the "truth commission" as illegitimate, it cannot be successful in bridging polarization among Hondurans.

But then, that is not what the commission is for: Bloomberg reports that Canahuati hopes it will help the country return to the Organization of American States and reduce investor concerns over political instability:

"We want to do what we can to leave behind the shock to our economy... Our intention is to have friends and alliances.”

Which is a far cry from working through the internal fractures exacerbated by the coup and the de facto regime, which were not healed by the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa.

"It Should Be Automatic"

Mario Canahuati, Honduras's Foreign Minister, says Honduras's readmission to the OAS should be automatic when the OAS next convenes in Peru on June. He currently is in the US to meet with Miguel Insulza to lobby for Honduras's reinsertion in the OAS. In a La Tribuna article, he's quoted as saying "the seventh point of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord says Honduras should be reintegrated into the different forums, and nothing remains but for the OAS to fulfill its promise under the document." In Canahuati's vision, it's automatic because they've fulfilled the letter, if not the intention, of the clauses of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord, so they should be allowed back in to play with other countries.

The OAS has a slightly different view. Albert R. Ramdin, the Assistant Secretary General of the OAS, said that the OAS “continues to seek solutions”, and “supports the efforts started by the governments of Central America to create the necessary conditions for the readmission of Honduras to the Organization”.

The OAS determined last July, under Article 21 of the Democratic Charter, that there had been an "unconstitutional interruption of the democratic order of a member state", and that diplomatic initiatives to correct the situation had failed. More than two-thirds of the member countries voted to suspend Honduras. Although suspended, Article 21 still required that Honduras uphold all its OAS obligations, including human rights obligations.

Under Article 22, restoration may be proposed, once the situation is resolved, by the Secretary General of the OAS (Miguel Insulza) or any member state, and will require that two-thirds of the member countries vote in favor of restoration.

You see the problem. While the United States, and several Central American countries are working for Honduras's readmission as a member in good standing in the OAS, there are other countries that have expressed concerns. These countries, including most of South America and Mexico, remain uncertain about whether Honduras should be readmitted at this time.

Honduras hasn't exactly complied with its human rights obligations as required under Article 21. It was added to the OAS Human Rights organization's "black list" in April. It also is not clear that even if the will was there to uphold human rights on the part of the government, that the judicial system has the required independence. Human rights violations aren't grounds for suspension, but they certainly will be taken into account in discussing reincorporation. While the US would like to say the situation is resolved and that Porfirio Lobo Sosa was democratically elected, as Hillary Clinton said in Costa Rica last month, there are other governments that have a different view.

Why is all of this important? What's at stake is the unlocking of aid from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Both have stated in the past that Honduras being reincorporated into the OAS would be required before funding could actually be restored. That funding, along with money from the BCIE and BID is critical to staving off a complete collapse of the Honduran economy.

The OAS discussions in June in Lima, Peru should be interesting.

Recognition: bumps in the road

On the heels of Mario Canahuati's triumphant claim reported yesterday that 70% of the nations that once recognized Honduras have now done so again comes a reminder that "recognition" is not a simple thing.

As reported in today's El Heraldo, there is an influential nation in the western hemisphere that has still not accredited the Honduran ambassador. It has even rejected proposed consuls. Is this Brazil? Mexico? Argentina?

No: it is the United States.

El Heraldo cites its own previous reporting on difficulties getting consuls approved because they are US residents or even are in the process of obtaining US citizenship. But Mario Canahuati, Foreign Secretary, is quoted as saying the problems are different:

Mario Canahuati said yesterday that "they are having problems" but for other reasons, for example, he cited the consul designated to occupy the position in Los Angeles. The problem is that she was discredited after the events of June 28, when ex president Manuel Zelaya Rosales was removed from power, since she still served in her position in the interim government of Roberto Micheletti.

Canahuati asserted that the remaining consuls would not have difficulties being approved. But he also acknowledged that the US has yet to approve Honduras' proposed ambassador.

Nor is the US alone. Canada, Peru, and Colombia-- all, like the US, counted as early supporters of recognition of the Lobo Sosa government-- have not yet approved proposed Honduran ambassadors.

Canahuati also clarified that Mexico has yet to re-establish relations, a point that has been confusing in the Honduran press coverage. Along with Mexico, Canahuati said Chile and Jamaica still hadn't "normalized the ties of friendship".

And things are still not going entirely the way Honduras wants with Spain, a major leader of European condemnation of the coup. According to El Heraldo, Canahuati said

there had been a meeting with the ambassador accredited to Honduras to find out the situation of the designated ambassador [to Spain], but he did not offer details of this meeting. Unofficially, it is known that Spain denied approval.

We cannot speculate about the reasons Spain, Mexico, Chile, and even the US have for being cautious about accepting diplomats proposed by the Lobo Sosa government. But what is clear is that, as the Honduran press has been emphasizing, all is not well in the Honduran diplomatic corps.

Recognition or Probation?

A recent email asked us which countries have officially recognized the Lobo Sosa government. Our reply to this correspondent, a fellow academic, was disappointing for his purposes, but encouraged us to consider a post; because the answer is, it depends. Depends on what "recognition" means; depends on who's identifying "recognition"; and depends on what is being recognized.

Honduran Secretary of State Mario Canahuati claims that the total is up to 50 countries. He had been previously quoted as saying Honduras had "succeeded in re-establishing relations with 29 countries of the 39 which which we have relations of diplomatic representation". Clearly, even he is using shifting criteria for what "recognition" means.

So let's start with the easy things first. Honduras is still, as of this writing, outside the OAS. Of course, the OAS feels this is a result of their expulsion of Honduras; but wait, remember: Micheletti claimed that Honduras withdrew from OAS before it was expelled.

As US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained in her road trip throughout Latin America, the US recognizes the November election as legitimate (despite the lack of any independent international observers) and thus the Lobo Sosa government has US recognition. And she wonders what some Latin American countries are waiting for. Except that as of this writing, the US has not in fact accepted the credentials of a proposed ambassador to Washington. According to La Tribuna on March 21, the current candidate is Jorge Ramón Hernández Alcerro, who some sources say was selected from a short list of five candidates proposed to the US, after Roberto Flores Bermúdez, who notoriously aligned himself with the regime of Roberto Micheletti, was not given US approval. And of course, the US laid down a set of conditions for Lobo Sosa to fulfill for recognition, including the farce of a "reconciliation government" and the (apparently permanently stalled) "truth commission", so even US recognition has been complicated. Most significantly, it has meant letting aid money flow again.

International lending agencies have in fact led the way in "recognizing" the Lobo Sosa administration, opening the purse strings for the kinds of loans that are critical for a government facing a treasury exhausted by the policy of Roberto Micheletti. Among those back in Honduras are the IMF, BID, World Bank, and the BCIE. Some countries that have agreed to restart financial assistance have been counted as "recognizing" Honduras, but not all of these have sent diplomats back to Tegucigalpa, or those diplomats have not tendered their credentials to the Lobo Sosa government.

Here's the crux of the matter: international diplomacy is not an on/off switch. Diplomatic protocol provides an exquisite variety of ways to establish relations, even with what are considered rogue states. On January 26, when Lobo Sosa was inaugurated, only the presidents of Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Taiwan attended, and only the US, Costa Rica, Colombia, Panama, and Peru were counted as fully recognizing Lobo Sosa's government. As of April 5, Honduran Foreign Minister Mario Canahuati reported approval of the Honduran ambassador to Costa Rica, and expected approval this week of those to Panama, Colombia, Spain, Guatemala, and El Salvador, out of a dozen nominations reportedly proposed by March 21.

The spectrum of available diplomatic approaches provides the international community, even the booster-ish US, with options to apply pressure on the Lobo Sosa administration. Some of that pressure can be seen as directed to whitewashing the coup and its aftermath. And some may be less cynical than that-- but the more serious the pressure, the less likely we will see it reflected in news media.

So. Who's recognized the Lobo Sosa government fully, by which I mean, sent a new ambassador, sent back the ambassador they had withdrawn, or either accepted the credentials of the Honduran ambassador or indicated that they will?

Shortly after the November elections, Panama, Colombia, Costa Rica and Peru were the first Latin American nations to indicate they would do so. They were joined in early 2010 by El Salvador, Guatemala, and the Dominican Republic, in an openly reported quid pro quo for safe conduct out of Honduras for former president Zelaya.

Mexico's position appears a little ambiguous, despite my best attempts to confirm reports that they have also recognized Lobo Sosa. Taiwan and Israel never actually clearly withdrew recognition from the Micheletti de facto regime, and both countries are said to be actively supporting the new Honduran government. And while Canada followed the US lead in supporting Lobo Sosa's advocacy for normalization, to the disgust of progressives in our northern neighbor, its official website on relations with Honduras as of March 4 said Canada was just "moving to normalize relations with the new, elected government of President Pepe Lobo".

Adamantly resisting are, as expected, the ALBA nations (most important being Bolivia, Ecuador, Nicaragua, and Venezuela). The largest South American nations-- Brazil and Argentina-- were rather polite but firm in resisting Secretary of State Clinton's coaxing to come on board. Speaking more diplomatically than Clinton, Brazil's Foreign Minister Celso Amorim noted that a coup is hard to forgive and forget.

On February 21, Mario Canahuati counted ten countries that were resisting re-establishing diplomatic missions with Honduras, including Brazil, Uruguay, México, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay and Chile. While Uruguay has been recorded consistently as not recognizing Lobo Sosa's government, Chile was briefly counted by the Honduran press as recognizing Lobo Sosa by virtue of Lobo Sosa's plans to attend the inauguration of its new president, plans he had to cancel after Honduras charge d'affaires in Chile communicated that he was not, in fact, invited to Pinera's inauguration.

France and Spain were noted as returning recalled ambassadors to Honduras in early March, yet coverage on April 2 of Spain's advocacy of including Honduras in EU discussions of an economic agreement with the Central American nations quoted Spanish minister of Foreign Affairs Miguel Ángel Moratinos as saying that Spain "has decided that its ambassador should return to Tegucigalpa" as a first action toward the normalization of diplomatic ties.

On March 24, El Heraldo reported on seven ambassadors presenting credentials to the Lobo Sosa government, from Finland, Germany, Israel, the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and India. Several will serve at the same time as ambassadors for other Central American countries. Other coverage cites Canahuati as listing Italy among those recognizing the Lobo Sosa government.

Meanwhile, Honduras has yet to confirm its ambassador to the United Nations, although the Zelaya appointee, Jorge Arturo Reina, was happy to announce that he would be staying on (prematurely, and perhaps inaccurately, as he is also reported to be Lobo Sosa's delegate to represent Honduras to the ALBA countries). Honduran press counted the UN as "tacitly" recognizing the Lobo Sosa government as of February 1, by including it in documents.On April 1, Mario Canahuati attended a meeting about aid to Haiti at the UN, credited as having recognized Lobo Sosa as of February 3.

So perhaps the best way to think about all this is that the Lobo Sosa administration is on global probation.

Skepticism about the new administration will not be easily erased as long as it continues to incorporate supporters of the coup d'Etat in prominent posts. The fact remains that Lobo Sosa never has disclaimed the Micheletti regime, or the coup itself. There are countries more scrupulous than the US that, while accepting that electoral politics is never completely clean, balk at affirming an election conducted under transparently repressive conditions.

Instead of thinking of this as a recognition tally, what should concern us more is how the nations skeptical of Honduras will exercise whatever influence they have on the new regime. By so quickly accepting the new government as entirely legitimate, and refusing to even acknowledge the existence of a broad popular movement for constitutional reform, the US has given up the potential to encourage new directions. Worse, it seems committed to policies of co-optation and token representation of other voices that ignore the wider community mobilizing for a new Honduras.

All In The Family

Does Porfirio Lobo Sosa have a "nepotism" problem? That, at least, is the accusation from the Juan Ramón Martínez in an editorial published in Tuesday's La Tribuna. This question was raised on February 21 in an El Heraldo story about nepotism and corruption in the Honduran consulates in the United States, and has been echoed in a story on the Spanish website of Tercera Información yesterday.

In Honduras, a President is a lame duck from the day he is elected, with all the negatives that entails. That is as true of Porfirio Lobo Sosa as it was of his predecessors. In such circumstances, you try to appoint people you trust to office, because only that way will you be sure to have your will carried out. Sometimes those you trust the most are family members.

"This seems natural to us," Juan Ramón Martínez wrote, "Callejas named his cousin, Zelaya gave a position to the wife of his Minister of the Presidency, while Flores (the Minister) gave, in a favor that had nothing to do with the institutions, but with political favoritism, [a position to] a brother of a former president."

Juan Ramón Martínez draws an analogy with the US: President Obama didn't publicly intervene when his sister-in-law was threatened with expulsion from the US, whereas Lobo Sosa would have named her to head the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). "From this, our backwardness," he concludes.

So what has Porfirio Lobo Sosa done to stir up these accusations of nepotism? He's appointed two of his children to high government positions, and another relative to a consular position.

Lobo Sosa named his son Jorge Dimitrov Lobo Alonso as political governor of the department of Olancho. Under the Honduran constitution, a political governor must reside in the department, and is the President's representative in the department. Prior to being named political governor, Jorge Lobo Alonso was President of the Olancho Nationalist Party Committee and a member of Lobo Sosa's Cambio Ya (Change Now) political movement. He also runs the family Hacienda La Empaliza, an agricultural and cattle enterprise which among other activities, was a large producer of genetically modified corn (Star Link) and beans.

Lobo Sosa named Jorge Lobo Alonso's wife, Dora Cinthia Gabriela Cardona de Lobo, as Coordinator of Education For All (EducaTodos in Spanish) in Honduras. Education For All is a set of education goals coordinated world-wide by UNESCO to achieve full literacy for all in the participating countries. It has been funded through multiple international agencies, including the World Bank and more recently US AID. In its current US AID-funded incarnation EducaTodos is a radio-based education program. None of the coverage explains Doña Dora Cardona de Lobo's qualifications to coordinate this program.

Porfirio Lobo Sosa is also credited with appointing his daughter, Tania Lobo de Quiñonez, to be the Director for Honduras of the Central American Bank of Economic Integration (BCIE in Spanish), though, to be fair, the press release says the Bank's board of Governors appointed her. She has been employed at the BCIE for the last eight years, having earned a university degree from the Universidad Tecnológica Centroamericana de Tegucigalpa in business administration. Her husband, Juan Carlos Quiñonez, was elected Alcalde of Maraita on November 29.

Finally, Mario Canahuati, the Foreign Minister, named Lobo Sosa's cousin (or nephew, depending on the news source), Francisco Humberto Quesada Lobo to be the Honduran Consul in New York City. According to the State Department website, Francisco Quesada Lobo was first appointed a consular agent in 2003 in New York where he was one of 3 consular agents. During 2008, an opinion piece in the newspaper, La Prensa, identified him as a "paracaidista", someone who uselessly occupies a post gathering a salary. Francisco was an active supporter of the de facto government during the last half of 2009.

The problem, as Jorge Rivera (identified as a leader of the Honduran community in the US in an El Heraldo article widely quoted elsewhere) sees it, is that Lobo Sosa is not seeking capable people to be named to the consulates, just relatives and friends.

"These are people who want to study abroad, and because of this they ask for posts, not because they are capable of doing the job."

On the naming of Francisco Humberto Quesada Lobo to be consul in New York City, Rivera said

"This is nepotism. The President promised not to abuse this form....the white collars, this is the problem of our country."

While the appointment of Lobo's daughter appears to make some logical sense. since she's been employed at the BCIE for the last eight years, the other appointments are patronage, the breaking of the government piñata, scattering the opportunities for enrichment that in Honduras goes along with such patronage.

In fact, there are rumblings within the Nationalist Party ranks that Lobo Sosa is not doing enough "gifting" of these state positions to party members who the status quo says are entitled. The Nationalist Party called a meeting for 3 pm tomorrow to demand that Lobo Sosa do more for his fellow party members.

Nepotism is just an extreme form of patronage. Is either any way to run a government?

Mario Canahuati Goes to Washington

A story on the AP newswire last Saturday quotes Mario Canahuati, new Foreign Minister of Honduras, saying he is on his way to Washington, DC to promote a direct meeting between Barack Obama and Porfirio Lobo Sosa as part of the campaign to normalize relations with the US.

According to El Tiempo, Lobo Sosa's main goal in meeting with President Obama would be to seek extension of the Temporary Protected Status, extended to almost 80,000 Honduran immigrants in the US. This status allowed undocumented migrants who came to the US in the wake of Hurricane Mitch to remain there.

Foreign Relations Minister Canahuati is quoted in the Spanish El Economista as saying

What has been requested is to strengthen relations with the US and logically for that a reunion of president Porfirio Lobo with president Barack Obama is necessary.

Of course, a direct face-to-face conversation between the two is not required for strengthening of relations with the US; but it would be a publicity boon for Lobo Sosa. It is worth remembering that President Obama never met directly with former President Zelaya after the coup d'etat, despite Zelaya making at least five separate trips to Washington, and despite reiterating that Zelaya remained the only recognized president of Honduras in the eyes of the US government, even as late as January 22 of this year. Instead, Zelaya was offered meetings with representatives of the State Department, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. There is a reason that governments use high-ranking cabinet members for such purposes: the aura that comes from meeting directly with the US president is political capital on its own.

So does Mario Canahuati have a chance of promoting such an encounter between Obama and Lobo Sosa? In part, that depends on defining a politically acceptable agenda. So it is worth pointing out that while the AP claims the purpose of such a meeting would be "restoring ties damaged by last June's coup", the actual proposal by Canahuati steers clear of that touchy terrain. Instead, by raising the impending end of the protected status in summer of this year, Canahuati has identified an issue that is of sufficient weight that it can credibly be proposed as the focus of joint discussions by presidents of the two countries. Which of course does not mean Obama has to agree to this, and given the radioactive nature of debate in the US about undocumented immigrants, and hysteria promoted by news coverage of gang violence by youths of Central American background, it would not be surprising if this issue were taken up at a lower level of the government.

And that brings us to a second factor at play in this bid to get Lobo Sosa some reflected glow, which is Canahuati's own skills and connections. As minister of Relaciones Exteriores, Canahuati brings to the table a history as Ambassador to Washington, from 2002 to 2005. As Ambassador, he was responsible for negotiating a previous renewal of the protected status given to undocumented Hondurans in the US after Hurricane Mitch. In 2005, he was the National Party candidate for vice president, on the losing ticket with Porfirio Lobo Sosa. He went on to be President of the Consejo Hondureño de la Empresa Privada (COHEP, Honduran Council of Private Enterprise) in 2006, speaking in opposition to President Zelaya's policies.

Canahuati is the son of a businessman, Juan Canahuati, whose wealth came from textile companies in the north coast, near San Pedro Sula, founded in 1964, and today called Grupo Lovable. His brother is Jesús Canahuati, head of the maquiladora's association. Jorge Canahuati, owner of La Prensa and El Heraldo, is another relative. According to a profile published while he was Ambassador to Washington previously, Mario Canahuati studied industrial engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology.

In a previous post, we noted Canahuati's role as a defender of the coup d'etat of 2009 who promoted the idea that the economic sector could withstand international pressure. He was a major rival of Lobo Sosa's in the primary campaign for the National Party nomination, leading the "Todos Somos Honduras" movement. Juan Canahuati was identified by sociologist Leticia Salomon as one of the group of wealthy elites who backed the June 28 coup d'etat. Jesus Canahuati was vice president of the Honduran section of CEAL, the Business Council of Latin America, notorious as the on-the-record employer of Lanny Davis as apologist for the 2008 coup.

Minister of Government: Áfrico Madrid Hart

As we noted in a recent post, cabinet Minister Áfrico Madrid (Secretary of Government, the equivalent of the US Secretary of the Interior) may be asked to introduce a cabinet resolution finally ending the anti-free speech decree promulgated under Roberto Micheletti. So it may be timely to consider who Madrid is, and what his investment in such a step might be.

Madrid is a long time political activist in the National Party. As early as 1994, he became visible by attacking the sitting Liberal Party President Carlos Reina of abuse of authority and misuse of public funds, for his intervention to end a banana workers' strike. In the last Nationalist Party administration, Madrid served as vice-minister of Labor. Perhaps equally pertinent to his position in the Lobo Sosa cabinet, though, is that Madrid rose to be the director of the National Party. In that post, he was prominent in fall of 2008 in the very visible public spat about whether Elvin Santos could legally be the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party. In January 2009, Madrid accused Santos of conducting a three-year campaign of martyrdom about being shut out by his own party, arguing that this gained him a sympathy preference in the first CID-Gallup Poll on the presidential election, which projected Santos ahead. In March of 2009, he stepped down from his former position and assumed the post of vice-president of the National Party. Madrid is, clearly, a major political operative in the Nationalist Party, and it is not surprising that he has a place in the Lobo Sosa cabinet.

What may be surprising is that he did not end up with the post of Secretary of State (Cancillería or Relaciones Exteriores), which press reports indicated he was pushing to receive. Indeed, in the transition team of Lobo Sosa, Madrid coordinated the External Relations team, and was quoted in the press expansively commenting on the future goals of that ministry, in a way that seemed appropriate for the next occupant of that post.

But in the end, External Affairs went to another: Mario Canahuati, who (in addition to his role as a vigorous defender of the coup d'etat of 2009 who promoted the idea that the economic sector could withstand international pressure) was a major rival of Lobo Sosa's in the primary campaign for the National Party nomination. More pertinent, perhaps, to this decision-- and the subject of a later post-- is Canahuati's experience as a former ambassador to the US, the primary focus of Honduran foreign policy now and for the foreseeable future.

That leaves Áfrico Madrid trying to deal with the lingering effects of the polarization of Honduran civil society. His first prominent action, of course, was trying to tie up a self-inflicted wound, when an overly-zealous Immigration official, acting on orders from the Micheletti regime that no one had rescinded, turned away the Brazilian consul, whose arrival in Honduras has been discussed in international press as a first step towards normal relations with the South American power. If this is any indication, Madrid may find his service in the cabinet rough going. While the English-language media widely reported Madrid's quick firing of the head of Immigration, Nelson Willy Mejía, Mejía was reinstated within 24 hours, by direct order of President Lobo Sosa, who is quoted saying it was a "mistake and misunderstanding".

It will be interesting to see how Madrid handles the next hot potato he is being handed, which may be the call to repeal Decreto PCM-124-2009. And especially interesting to see if he has the support of Lobo Sosa in whatever position he takes.