OAS calls for new elections in Honduras

Today witnessed a series of press conferences in the contested Honduran election.

Shortly after the OAS Mission said it would be making a statement late today, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral announced its own announcement would be made earlier in the day.

Not surprisingly, given previous statements, the TSE's announcement was their conclusion that the presidential election had been won by Juan Orlando Hernández, of the Partido Nacional. Neither the Partido Liberal nor the Alianza formed by two opposition parties, the Partido Anti-corrupción and LIBRE, have accepted the vote tallies posted by the TSE, alleging a number of different kinds of fraud.

There is also a potential legal issue left unaddressed: whether the candidacy of Hernández was entirely legal. The current president ran for an unprecedented second term under a Honduran constitution that prohibited even talk of re-election, until a Supreme Court he shaped while head of Congress ruled otherwise. The Supreme Court ruling opened the door to re-election. But lawmakers in Honduras did not pass any legislation authorizing re-election. Technically, then, this is not just an unprecedented election outcome: it is one that took place outside any defined legal framework.

Both the European Union and the Organization of American States are on record as seeing the electoral process as problematic. While the EU released a statement today that many read as supporting the TSE's conclusion, the OAS today signaled more reservations, beginning with statements by Secretary General Luis Almagro on Twitter.

These were expanded in the OAS announcement this evening that the Secretary General of the OAS cannot provide certainty about the results of the election. The press release reiterates previous descriptions of the electoral process as "characterized by irregularities and deficiencies" and of "very low technical quality" and "lacking integrity".

The press release continues:

in the face of the impossibility of determining a winner, the only road possible for the winner to be the Honduran people is a new called to general elections, within the strictest respect for the rule of law, with  guarantees of a TSE that would enjoy the technical capacity and the confidence of the citizenry and the political parties.

This is followed by the appointment of a commission from the OAS of ex-presidents Jorge Quiroga and Alvaro Colom to "carry out the necessary work for a new electoral process and national democratic reconciliation in Honduras".

The full basis for this position is contained in the OAS mission's report to the Secretary General. It rehearses all the weaknesses in the electoral process. It calls allowing a run for re-election based on a court finding (without implementing legislation in place) a "bad practice...that revived the polarization generated by the coup and political crisis of 2009".

The OAS report also provides a new statistical analysis by Professor Irfan Nooruddin of Georgetown University addressing whether the sharp change in voting patterns noted after a break in counting could be explained in any innocent way.

This retraces some of the terrain covered by an analysis in The Economist that concluded that the shifts in voting seen were very unlikely.

Professor Nooruddin uses additional techniques, and concludes "on the basis of this analysis, I would reject the proposition that the National Party won the election
legitimately."

We will revisit these statistical analyses tomorrow, explaining what they do (and do not) show, and relate those observations to some of the known problems in the conduct of Honduran elections in general, and this one in particular.

For now, though, the question is: will Juan Orlando Hernández accept the OAS recommendation? Or does he think he can ignore the massive resistance to his re-election that has already led to almost two dozen deaths of protesters, and the closure of roads across the country?

Analyses support doubts about vote and OAS disclaims results while police refuse to stop protests

Our headline may seem to juxtapose three unrelated things. But we think they have to be seen together. And actually, there's one more thing... and it's a doozy.

To recap where the process stands: the TSE resumed counting vote tallies without representatives of the other parties. At the end, it says its count shows the incumbent president with a lead of around 55,000 votes. According to the TSE, the next step is for the parties to register challenges and petitions, within 10 days, and then within 20 days the TSE will certify an outcome to the election.

(In reporting this story, the Voice of America slipped up, describing Juan Orlando Hernández as "U.S.-backed"; the US doesn't normally take sides in a foreign election.)

No one who has watched the situation unfold can be completely satisfied that the vote count has been transparent or without problems. Unexplained prolonged delays in posting numbers, computer crashes that received different explanations at different times, and above all, the weird behavior of the numbers before and after the more than day-long delay, have Hondurans and international observers alike worried.

The OAS actually went so far in its preliminary report to conclude that "the tight margin of the results, and the irregularities, errors and systemic problems that have surrounded this election do not allow the Mission to have certainty about the results".

In the body of the report, the OAS expresses concerns about the vote counting process, noting some ballot boxes arrived open, missing documents, or without security. They also write that after initially counting ballots as they arrived, at some point the TSE "altered the order" to use "criteria that were not explained". So the vote counting switched from non-selective, to selective-- but we don't know what criteria were used to select votes to count.

The OAS concluded that the only route out would be for the main candidates to negotiate an agreement to review the 1000+ poll tallies that were scrutinized for inconsistencies, as well as recount the 5000+ tallies counted after the initial phase of vote counting, when the trend changed, as well as do a complete recount of three departments (Lempira, La Paz, and Intibuca), rural states that had exaggeratedly high reported voter turnout. That is a complete endorsement of the position of the Alianza.

Independently, The Economist, which previously published an article about a tape they received apparently showing training of National Party operatives in ways to cheat, undertook a statistical analysis that gives support to Alianza complaints that the change in voting trends after the break in counting is statistically improbable.

And that brings us to today's amazing development: the police across Honduras, including the US supported militarized policing units, standing down and returning to their bases, refusing to follow the orders they received to stop protests. Under the state of exception declared by Juan Orlando Hernández, free circulation in the country was limited, a night time curfew was declared, and the armed forces and police were directed to remove protesters. What followed was violence, including deadly violence.

Announcing their stand-down, the national police spokesman said "“We want peace, and we will not follow government orders – we’re tired of this". 

When a sitting president who has concentrated power loses the ability to command the police, it is a signal of loss of control over the forces necessary to maintain dominance. Even if the TSE were to declare him the winner, it is not clear how governable Honduras would be for a president who took advantage of a somewhat ambiguous court ruling to seek a deeply unpopular second term in office.

After the 2013 election, when Hernández received only 37% of the vote, the three parties that split the majority of the presidential votes did not cooperate as a concerted opposition. This time around, two of those parties entered an alliance and ran an agreed on presidential candidate.  This time, the Liberal Party candidate who trailed in the polls has been vocal in saying his review of the poll tallies says the Alianza won, and has supported their calls for a recount, even a full 100% recount if needed.

And here's the extra bit: according to a Honduran lawyer, whose twitter profile says she is a Liberal Party member, election law actually demands a recount of some votes already.

This isn't because of the uncertainties about counting the poll tallies that are already being debated.

It's because the margin between candidates is less than the number of null votes. Null votes are those marked as invalid at the polling place, and thus not included in the totals on the poll tallies from which the central electoral authorities work.

The law appears to require reviewing the null votes from the original ballots, if there are more of them than the margin between candidates. With around 55,000 votes officially between the two candidates, the number of votes marked null at the polling places is 135,000.

The TSE is unlikely to do any of this. Unfortunately, we doubt Hernández will risk the victory he went so far to gain and agree to the kind of recount and scrutiny of the counting process that is being called for by the Alianza, the Liberal Party-- and the OAS.

Until the army stands down and returns to its barracks. Unlikely, yes. But stranger things seem to be happening...

Controversy about votes being "monitored"

 UPDATED to add Santa Barbara and Cortes to list of departments where votes held for "monitoreo" favored the Alianza; and to note that the TSE has said it will count all votes, something we are seeing happen as we go through our list of tallies in monitoreo.

Today. reports from Honduras indicated that the Tribunal Supremo Electoral was holding about 300,000 uncounted votes in a state of "monitoreo". They offered no explanation why. What was expressed was that these votes would not be counted before a winner was named in the now extremely tight contest between Juan Orlando Hernández and Salvador Nasralla.

This alarmed international observers, who observed-- quite rightly-- that this many uncounted votes could well swing such a tight election. Both the OAS and the European Union publicly called on the TSE to count all the votes before designating a victor.

Remarkably, this call was echoed by COHEP, the Honduran council of private enterprise.

The EU in particular urged the TSE to take the time to count the votes, so that every vote was recognized, rather than hurry to end the election prematurely. UPDATE: as of 10 PM Tegucigalpa time, the TSE has said it will count all votes; and we are seeing the status change as we go through our list.

We decided to review the vote tallies that are being held for greater scrutiny-- or monitoreo-- ourselves, to see if the suspicion many have, that this includes a preponderance of pro-Alianza voting, was upheld.

It may take us a few hours. So far, though, in the Departments of Atlantida, Colon, Cortes, Santa Barbara, Valle and Yoro, the total of votes on these uncounted tallies for the Alianza is higher than the total for the National Party. (We are suspending this project at 1 AM Tegucigalpa time, as the TSE continues to update some of these. We will spot check other departments tomorrow...)

There may be reasons these tallies require extra scrutiny. There are check sum features built into the tallies, so errors in transcription or uncertainties about numerals can be resolved in many cases. In others, the question would be if, for example, over-writing on one line should result in ignoring the votes for other candidates.

So far, though, it is clear that this vote pool reserved from counting would contribute to shifting the margin back in the other direction.

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.

Mediating The Status Quo

Yesterday John Biehl del Rio, the Chilean diplomat designated by the Organization of American States to be their representative to the National Dialogue in Honduras, with the title of "mediator", called the indignados and LIBRE "pig-headed" and "imbeciles".

That's not how you mediate a dialogue, that's how you end one.

The job of a facilitator or mediator is to listen to both sides of an issue and to try to bring them into conversation about their common ground.  It's not the role of a mediator to publicly insult one side in the process they are mediating.

By his words, Biehl has been showing all along that he isn't really a mediator.

Gentle readers will recall that in June, in response to the marchas de antorchas, with their demand for an international commission against impunity and corruption, Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández unilaterally announced a Sistema Integral Contra la Impunidad (SICA, "Integrated System against Impunity") and called for a "National Dialogue" whose participants the government would designate.

The proposal, not immediately available to the Honduran press at the time, called for the establishment of several oversight committees for the Honduran judiciary, all of the committee members appointed by the Executive Branch.  It specified no procedures or reporting mechanisms by which the "National Dialogue" would provide any input or revision to the proposed SICA process or composition.

Hernández presided over the first few meetings himself, meeting with jurists and business, before turning the whole process over to a Congress member to organize and oversee.

Some parts of civil society saw the National Dialogue as a government show, with no stated objective, and refused to participate.

Those not participating include the indignados, who for the last 16 weeks have marched every Friday calling for a Comision Internacional Contra de la Impunidad (CICIH) and for President Hernandez to resign. The two opposition political parties that were first on the ballot this last election (LIBRE and PAC) have refused to participate for much the same reasons: the control of the process by the current government and the lack of any connection between the "dialogue" and possible reforms.

Hernández's proposal "reforms" the Judicial Branch by making it responsible to committees for judicial oversight and review established and appointed by the Executive Branch.  This further erodes judicial independence.

This was the official response of the government to the indignados, and it was hoped that it would weaken support for their calls for a CICIH, and silence their calls for Hernández's resignation.

When that didn't work, Hernández formally asked the OAS and UN for facilitators or mediators to help bring all of Honduran civil society to participate in the National Dialogue.  Enter John Biehl del Rio.

Biehl del Rio has a fairly long history of engagement with Honduras.

As a chief adviser to Costa Rican President Oscar Arias, he was the principal mediator for the San Jose Accords intended to return José Manuel Zelaya to office after the 2009 coup.  Before that he spent 4 years in and around Tocoa in the Bajo Aguan, teaching peasants about cooperatives.

It may be that in Honduras, Biehl del Rio sees similarities to how he described his native Chile in 2010:

"There is a political world that needs to go.  When the national task fundamentally consists in practicing the art of disagreeing to thereby gain power, there prevails a will and ambitions that destabilize the possibility of a good government.  The culture of confrontation which we inherit from the past, severely limits the ways to satisfy the necessities of the people.  To use and supply yourself with stereotypes from another historical epoch to exercise opposition or to govern is to deliberately damage the country....If the opposition looks for the failure of the government to rise to power, it is jointly responsible for restarting one of the worst nightmares of the country."

The nightmare Biehl del Rio was referring to in Chile was the rise of the military which overthrew Salvador Allende. While Biehl del Rio was not a supporter of Allende, he went into exile after Pinochet took power.

In Honduras, however, it seems the place of the military in his critique is taken by the indignados and political parties opposed to the current president. Much of what Biehl del Rio has said about the opposition in Honduras echos the sentiments about Chile quoted above.

Biehl told the Honduran press that

There are many people who have taken this hard time for Honduras as a kind of political pre-campaign, and this crisis as an opportunity to kill their possible rivals.  This I have noted in conversations. With these people it is very difficult to make advances because they only have one thing in mind.  Hondurans are very political, at least in Tegucigalpa and San Pedro Sula.  They give the impression that everyone wants to be president and as such their positions are very sharp and cutting because they see that this is a weak moment."

So for Biehl, the indignados are merely pre-campaign presidential politicking.

But Honduras isn't Chile, and there are indications that Biehl del Rio may not completely understand Honduran politics.

Among his other pronouncements he called the Honduran Congress "representative of the people (or Nation) and a transversal cut through society", suggesting it should play a leading role in the National Dialogue.

Now the Honduran Congress is many things, but it does not represent Honduran society, directly or indirectly.  Congress members are loyal and answerable to the political party that ensures their election, and do not represent a local constituency. There is really no way to consider these political insiders a "transversal cut" through society-- nothing in the Honduran political system works that way. This is part of the problem that has brought so many people out on the streets.

Biehl del Rio may see similarities to his Chile in 2010, but in the intervening years, he's lost his ability to say this diplomatically, and is reduced to calling the Honduran opposition names.

That means instead of mediating, he has adopted a side-- with a president elected by a minority of voters in an intensely split election, whose party is wrapped in a scandal over the financing of that very election, and who is trying to insist that he knew nothing of the money moving around. It's a bad side to be on, and it is unfortunate that it has led him to dismiss the largest show of public engagement in governance in modern Honduran history.

"Central American Spring"?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Slow change indeed.

TSE Vote Counting Errors

The OAS audit of the TSE's software was accurate in its concerns: the vote counting part is turning out to be less than perfect.

Observers have noted several anomalies, some of which have been corrected, and others of which have not.  Here's an example that was still visible in the system as of this morning.

Consider the following screenshot (from the TSE's website here) taken at 1:19 pm today.  Click on the image for a larger version.

This shows the scanned Acta for MER 3311 of the Escuela Leonardo Aguilar Oseguera school voting site in San Pedro Sula. On the left is the scanned Acta; on the right are the vote totals that the TSE credited to each candidate for this MER.

Precisely how those vote totals enter the system is unclear from TSE-provided information.  Are the handwritten Actas submitted to an automatic optical character recognition system (ReadIRIS was mentioned in one TSE story about the vote counting system) or are the tallies entered by someone reading and entering the values for each candidate?

In either case, the vote total listed for Nasralla on the TSE website is only 3 votes, not the 103 votes listed on the tally sheet.

We are not alleging any mischief here (although that's possible). Rather, this is precisely the kind of sloppiness the OAS audit of the software used led us to expect.

This Acta should have failed the software confidence checks (because the number of votes in the tallies does not match the number of votes allegedly cast in this MER). But it either wasn't flagged by the system supposed to catch such inconsistencies (it should have detected as an under vote), or else a human intervened and OK'd the result: human error.

In either case the erroneous numbers were submitted to the vote tallying system with these inconsistencies and were tallied, giving Salvador Nasralla of the PAC party 100 fewer votes than he actually received from this mesa.

These are all officially approved tallies, officially approved errors, not the Actas sequestered for inconsistencies. An Acta does not appear on the website if it hasn't been included in the vote totals, so the TSE thinks there's no problem with this one.

We beg to differ. 

This is just a single example of the kinds of errors we are seeing in the vote totals publicly provided by the TSE.  The sad part is that it is not unique. There are many similar kinds of errors visible in the Actas posted on the TSE website.

The software audit by the OAS said the vote totaling system did not meet international standards for such systems and needed a lot more work (and a reimplementation) to do so.  It looks like the TSE went ahead and used this poor quality software, which would mean it should independently audit all of the Actas and vote totals for consistency and sanity (meaning, are the numbers reported consistent with the number of voters in a specific mesa) before declaring anyone a winner.

Other errors that were apparent earlier are now systematically being corrected, so it will not surprise me if by the time this blog entry is published, the errors I know about (including the one above) have been made to disappear.

But it is these kinds of failings, and silent corrections without acknowledging the failings, that reduce public confidence in the TSE and its official results, leading people like Salvador Nasralla and Manuel Zelaya Rosales, ask for a public, open, recount of the official Actas before the TSE declares a winner.

A public recount of the Actas would go a long way to providing confidence that everyone is adding up the same numbers to get the same vote totals, which frankly would improve public perception of the TSE.

Without that, no matter how many international observers say the process on Sunday was legitimate, there will remain large segments of the Honduran people who believe that the process after Sunday was not.

Auditing the Vote-Counting Software

The OAS got a chance earlier this month to see a snapshot of the Sistema Integrado de Escrutinio y Divulgación Electoral (SIEDE).  They found the system worked-- sort of. Citing "poor performance" in key steps, the OAS reports that Honduras still needs to finish the last bits of code to ensure "verification of results".

These conclusions were translated by the Honduran press into headlines like "The system to transmit the vote tallies can work well" and "The OAS discards [the possibility of] fraud in the elections in Honduras and the electoral entity [the TSE] asks for respect" and "The OAS certifies that the equipment to transmit the electoral results is trustworthy".

Not quite.

The report is an audit of the software that's going to be used to count votes for things like security, accuracy, transparency.  El Heraldo posted the PDF of the report here.

SIEDE is designed to do the following tasks.  First it scans the vote tally sheets, printing copies for each of the political parties, and then it digitally signs them and sends them via HTTPS to the Tribunal Supremo Electoral's (TSE) data center in Tegucigalpa over a cell phone network.  Computers in the data center receive the scanned tally sheets and verify the digital signature, forwarding copies to the political parties and the international auditors, then analyze the internal consistency of the transmitted tally sheet.  Next the data center computers transcribe the tally sheet using Optical Character Recognition software and verify the data on the tally sheet, monitoring it for inconsistencies.  Finally SIEDE, in the TSE data center, accumulates and integrates the votes from this tally sheet with others already entered into the system, generating vote totals and sharing the results.

SIEDE is a combination of off-the-shelf hardware and software, some of it from vendors, some written for the TSE. 

The hardware at each polling place consists of a laptop, wireless modem for the wireless network of CLARO or TIGO (two of the large phone companies in the country), and a multifunction ink-jet printer and scanner.  Each polling place runs software which will digitally sign, then upload, the completed vote tallies for President, Congress, and Municipal office to an off-site data center in a hotel, set up by the Tribunal Supremo Electoral.  The data center has systems that act as web servers to receive the signed tally sheet images over HTTPS, in a Microsoft SQL Server database to store the images and record information about their processing, and Readiris OCR software to read the numbers from the scanned forms for later validation and processing. 

All of this commercial software is held together both in the polling station and the data center by automation code written by TSE programmers.

During the one month audit period, the OAS observers got to witness three tests of the SIEDE system by the TSE, each with increasing load.  The audit was complete on November 20 with the release of the report. 

Key findings are the following:

The findings refer, fundamentally, to the behavior of the system during the simulations,  which were carried out without all of the functionality and with test data that was smaller than the defined objectives for this audit.  For that reason, the conclusions refer to the behavior of the system as of the dates mentioned without a possibility to predict its behavior with the volumes of information and expected loads on election day...

In general terms, and under the technical functional conditions observed, the operational modules that bind the system together are functional, complying with the established parameters of the SIEDE process.  But, because of the gaps in the load testing during the simulations and that the system must process on election day, the part that consolidates and integrates, and discloses the data is of special concern [since in each simulation] we saw poor performance in the systems that accumulate the results and schedule tasks.  Because of this it is a priority to optimize the mechanisms used in the processing of the information and to finish the code to do the work of verification of the results.

Now, there is much the TSE deserves credit for here.  Building this kind of voting system in-house, from scratch, to international standards is admirable, and from the OAS checklist, many of the parts they completed they did well, and the OAS had few concerns about much of the completed code.  But the TSE wrote no specifications detailing how the software should behave, and was slow to purchase the hardware and software on which to build the standardized infrastructure.  That makes it difficult to say the say the system is doing what it should, since there are no specifications to check it against.

The OAS found the code for everything up to tallying the results and sharing them with the political parties to be up to international standards, and that each stage to that point provided correct and verifiable results to pass along to the next. 

But that's where their praise stopped.

In relation to the module that consolidates, integrates, and shares the results, the audit detected failures that gave evidence of a failure to follow international standards of quality required for this type of program.  It is important to note that aspects like correction, trustworthiness, and efficiency have not been complied with in these modules up to the finalization of the simulations.

Translation?  The code that counts the votes and accumulates the results and then shares them with the political parties, is incomplete, nor does what is there meet the international quality standards the OAS deems ordinary and proper for this kind of code.

To be eight days out from the election and not code complete is asking for trouble. The OAS indicating that changes to the existing code base still needed to be made before the election is also asking for trouble. 

I managed enterprise level software projects of comparable complexity in a former career, and I can tell you you don't make these kinds of major, unproven,  changes to a system in the last 8 days before you roll it out unless rolling it out as it is will be a certain disaster. Why?  Because you're inviting things to go horribly wrong by making late changes, and they almost always do.

There is one last simulation scheduled for November 23, the day before the election, and it is supposed to be a full scale load test.  If anything goes wrong, there won't really be any time to fix things. 

Luckily the TSE has 30 days to declare the winner, just enough time to do a hand count of the ballots if necessary.

Supreme Recusal

When the US Embassy stated that a solution to the crisis about separation of powers would come from the Honduran Supreme Court, they endorsed a ludicrous legal process that got underway today.

To catch up: last week Chief Justice Rivera Aviles seated the four new de facto justices appointed by Congress, without comment. 

He did so despite his so-called statement of solidarity with the deposed justices, at least one of whom was sitting in her office in the Supreme Court building at the time.  No surprise since we surmised Rivera Aviles was actually in favor of the Congressional action.

In his role as Chief Justice he assigned the new judges to the Sala Constitucional, replacing the four deposed justices. He then asked them to determine if they could hear the appeal of unconstitutionality submitted on behalf of the four justices dismissed, and if they ruled they could, to issue their ruling on said appeal.

Let's be sure you understand this: the four justices whose appointment is at issue were asked by the Chief Justice of the Honduran Supreme Court to decide whether to hear an appeal of their appointment.

Today that group of four judges, plus Oscar Chinchilla, the lone justice in the Sala Constitucional not fired, took up the appeal of the four justices fired by Congress. They promptly recused themselves, sending the appeal back to Rivera Aviles for disposition.

Rivera Aviles' next step will either be to try and conform a special Sala Constitucional to hear just this appeal, selecting from the remaining justices, or he may turn to the list of 30 or so judges nominated by Congress as potential candidates for the court who were not chosen, to compose a special bench to hear this one appeal.

Since eight of the remaining justices on the Supreme Court wrote a letter supporting the fired justices, and therefore should recuse themselves from hearing this appeal, Rivera Aviles should be able to choose the judges he wants to hear the case from this judicial back bench, to craft the outcome he desires.

Meanwhile, Ramon Custodio, the Human Rights ombudsman, stated that if this case gets to the Interamerican Court of Human Rights at the OAS, it is given that the government of Honduras will lose the case and be condemned, yet again, by the court.  Custodio releases his own report on the incident tomorrow, so stay tuned.

The Rest of the Story

The Honduran press is charming in what it does not report.

Yesterday the OAS human rights commission, known in Spanish as the CIDH, issued its annual report for 2011 on human rights in the Americas. That report chose to highlight the human rights situations in four countries: Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, and Venezuela. El Heraldo reported on the release, but emphasized the human rights situations in the other three countries, omitting or badly summarizing the Honduran case. Of the 19 paragraphs in the Heraldo article, two are devoted to Honduras, two to Cuba, three to Colombia, and nine to Venezuela.

The article notes that Honduras is again on the list of countries with situations which gravely affect the enjoyment of fundamental rights. It tells us that the CIDH reports that problems in justice, security, marginalization and discrimination have worsened since the coup of June 28, 2009, and that over 2011 the fallout from the coup and its aftermath has continued. El Heraldo summarizes the content of the 33 page report on Honduras in one sentence:

Honduras is generally called out for the death of journalists, the murders of LGBT citizens, and threats against human rights activists.

But the CIDH report covers much more. And these aren't even its main complaints.

So here is some of what El Heraldo left out.

First of all, the CIDH first chose to add Honduras to the Chapter 4 detailed discussions in the 2009 Annual report. During 2011, the Commission reports it continued to observe the human rights situation in Honduras with a special emphasis on the consequences of the 2009 coup.

In beginning a discussion of 2011, it writes

290. As you can see all through the present report, respect and the state guarantee of the right to life, liberty, and personal safety during 2011, the CIDH received worrying information about the condition of journalists, human rights defenders, campesinos in the Bajo Aguan, indigenous people, and LGBT people, all in a context of a a high rate of murder and impunity.

291. During the present year (2011) we have continued to receive information that indicates that the Police and the military have used disproportional force against opposition protesters, which has resulted in serious episodes of violence and repression against the protesters.

A footnote indicates that Ramon Custodio told the CIDH that fewer than 19% of the human rights cases reported through his office are investigated and returned by the Dirección Nacional de Investigacíon (DNIC) with 81% of the cases either remaining perpetually under investigation or not acted upon, a situation which Custodio calls "absolute impunity".

On November 22, 2011 the CIDH sent a preliminary copy of this report to Honduras for a reply. The Honduran government replied twice, on December 16 and 21, 2011. The CIDH incorporated the Honduran government's responses to the material points the report makes to create a final version of the chapter for Honduras in the 2011 Annual Report.

Footnotes indicate that Honduras's reply was in part something like (paraphrasing here, see footnotes 442 and 443 for a discussion of the Honduran response) 'you've already discussed the issues surrounding the coup in your 2010 and 2011 reports; we hope that in 2012 this will not be included'. That is consistent with the Lobo Sosa government's refrain that they are the product of "reconciliation". The pointed refusal of the CIDH to ignore the link between the coup and the continuing erosion of human rights and hardening of impunity makes it clear that whatever "reconciliation" means to the government of Honduras, the rule of law, respect for constitutional, civil, and human rights, and institutional rejection of the exercise of raw power have not recovered since that episode.

The report looks at a large number of topics, some stemming from the 2009 coup, like "amnesty", and others that have nothing directly to do with the events of 2009, like "children's rights". Overall, it paints a bleak picture of Honduras's response to what CIDH recognizes as violations of human rights.

In fairness, the report also contains a several page section on what Honduras is doing right, from a legal and institutional framework. It cites no actual concrete positive actions, echoing other observers who note that setting up human rights offices without giving them support to follow through does not actually work.

Among many topics, the report looks in depth at the human rights situation in the Bajo Aguan. Since September 2009, 42 people affiliated with campesino movements, plus a journalist and his wife, have been killed there. Another campesino activist was "disappeared" in 2011. A further 162 campesinos have been changed with crimes in connection with the agricultural conflict in the region. The CIDH notes that right after the military were deployed to the Bajo Aguan as part of Operation Xatruch II, 7 campesinos, including two movement leaders, were assassinated, 5 were wounded, and two tortured by the troops.

The Honduran government replied, noting that its not just campesinos, but also 12 guards, 4 workers, and 5 others died in violence in the Bajo Aguan in 2010, along with 20 campesinos or (in their words) "supposed campesinos". Of those, the Public Prosecutor reported that they have investigative advances on 4 cases.

The Honduran government has not investigated any of the allegations against its troops.

The CIDH also reviewed the official Truth Commission report and highlighted its recommendations regarding human rights.

It went through the cases of 14 journalists killed in 2010 and 2011 in Honduras as well. The Honduran government reply reported that it has opened 4 legal cases in these murders and issued arrest warrants. In Honduras, the police do not seek those for whom arrest warrants have been issued, so this is a largely symbolic move.

There's a lot more, documenting problems specific to 2011, and it would be well worth reading, especially for those who make policy about US relations to Honduras.

The report on Honduras ends with ten specific recommendations for the government of Honduras:

1. Assure that the justice system provides effective access to justice for all people.

2. Investigate, judge, and discipline those responsible for human rights violations.

3. Stop the illegal groups that act with impunity outside of the law. The state has the responsibility to dismantle the armed civilian groups that function outside the law and to punish the illegal actions they commit to prevent the recurrence of violence in the future.

4. To prevent the murders, threats, and intimidation against human rights defenders, journalists, radio reporters, and social leaders and to implement the protections authorized by the CIDH.

5. To carry out, urgently, investigations by independent groups to clarify and determine if the murder of human rights activists, social leaders, journalists, radio broadcasters and members of the Resistance are related to the exercise of their profession or in the context of the 2009 coup. Also to judge and condemn those responsible for those murders.

6. To make amends to the victims of human rights violations.

7. Guarantee conditions so that human rights defenders and labor rights defenders can freely carry out their duties, and to abstain from adopting legislation that limits or places obstacles on their work.

8. Improve the security of the citizens and order that the military and military intelligence do not participate in actions of citizen security, and when there are exceptional circumstances, that they subordinate themselves to civilian authority.

9. Make available the necessary measures so that women who are victims of violence have access to adequate judicial protection and adopt legal and judicial mechanisms to investigate, punish, and aid those reporting violence against women.

10. Make available the necessary measures to protect sectors of the Honduran population historically marginalized and highly vulnerable such as children, the LGBT community and the indigenous and Garifuna communities.

Most of these are points that should not need to be made; they are basic to human rights; yet the CIDH found it necessary to repeat them to the Honduran government.

The Honduran government wants credit for reforming the institutions of human rights, and the CIDH gives them credit for beginning institutional reforms that normally would lead to improved human rights if operationalized.

Unfortunately for Honduras, so far, these are only institutional reforms which have brought about no changes in the lived experience of everyday Hondurans.

That's why the CIDH report is important.

Truth Delayed?

The official government truth commission, headed by Eduardo Stein of Guatemala, announced yesterday that the commission's report would be delayed until the middle of June.

As recently as 11 February, Stein announced the report would be ready by mid-march.

On April 13, Stein told us report was to be delivered at the end of May, in time for review prior to the OAS General Assembly in June. At that time, he said it was specifically to be previewed to the OAS before it would be made public, in order to help them with their deliberations, so the change of timing now is odd.

Odder still is the announced reason for delaying again: to not influence the OAS member countries in their vote to return Honduras to full membership. In a complete reversal, Stein now says:

"We want to avoid it serving as an excuse or argument for anyone to contaminate the discussion over the return of Honduras."

But it seems that was precisely the point a few weeks ago, to influence the OAS discussion. So what's changed?

Stein himself has admitted the report is done, the list of recommendations finished.

He has a few questions he would like to ask Manuel Zelaya Rosales, who has refused to deal with the commission, but believes he has sufficient knowledge of events from other sources.

Stein told reporters:

"We would have liked to historically document his version of some of the topics, because it it impossible for us to speculate what the intentions of ex-president Zelaya were on taking up certain positions and making certain decision, things that only he can clarify.... For us the work is finished, save some questions that we would have liked to ask him [Zelaya], but it was his decision...."

One wonders why influencing the OAS was fine in April, but has become anathema in May.

And in either case, we wonder if it is appropriate for a so-called "Truth Commission" to be scheduling the release of its findings to advance a political goal of the people whose actions are supposed to be under scrutiny.

Of course, if you begin your hunt for "truth" having prejudged that the current political administration bears no responsibility for the actions that many of its members took to implement a coup and the repression that followed, maybe that kind of politicization doesn't seem at odds with truth at all.

But we continue to think that a truth commission that starts with conclusions, and that times its reports for political ends, has very little credibility.

OAS Admission Redux

(Traveling so infrequent access for posting over the next two weeks)

Apparently within a couple of weeks, OAS Secretary General José Miguel Insulza will present a report to the OAS on conditions in Honduras. The report will address the state of human rights in Honduras, and Zelaya's safe return to Honduras.

Insulza says the report will present enough information to let governments decide if they want to readmit Honduras to the OAS or not. He said that in the coming days he hopes he will have more positive information to complete his report, sufficient to convene the OAS and contemplate the changes.

"If you consider those two points resolved you can vote for the readmission of Honduras into the OAS,"

said Insulza. He added

"If those who carried out the coup would have known the bad that was going to come to them, probably they would have waited until the elections; they were only 6 months [away]. What happened was that there, among them were some that thought they would stay for more time, the reaction of the international community stopped them."

Insulza repeated his belief that the solution to the problems in Honduras lies with Honduras a member of the OAS rather than outside it.

El Heraldo seems to have missed this story so far, and instead covered a separate Insulza statement, one he made a couple of days ago in Mexico to the effect that the constitutional altercation will be over in Honduras when those responsible for the coup are tried in court. Insulza added,

"Its not a caprice the solidarity that the OAS countries maintain on this theme, but it deals with a key element to guarantee the existence of an effective democracy in Honduras"

The OAS Made Us Do It

News from Honduras: the Lobo Sosa government is moving rapidly to create a Secretariat of Human Rights and Justice.

Which is not going down well in Honduras with a group of people who continually criticize Lobo Sosa.

No, we don't mean the resistance (although we expect no one in resistance will believe such a move will lead to improved enforcement of human rights legislation or treaties). The criticism coming for Lobo is from members of congress and the government.

They are outraged that this new position has been imposed from outside, as a requirement for the OAS to reconsider Honduras as a member. Except that is kind of not true.

The allegation is made repeatedly by those opposed to the new cabinet post, like Nationalist Party and Choluteca Congressional Representative Francisco Argeña.

According to La Tribuna, when the Nationalist Party caucused on Thursday, they were told by their leadership that the establishment of this Secretariat was a condition for Honduras's return to the OAS. The Nationalists came out of the caucus affirming they would support the creation of the Secretariat, assuring its passage. But that doesn't mean they are happy about it.

Nora de Melgar, Vice President of Congress, told La Prensa

"We have already started the debate; it's one of the conditions of the Organization of American States for re-entry in the Organization; it's not something invented by the President of the country, nor the National Party, it's a mandate from them [the OAS] and as a poor country we have to do it to get the aid."

While the Nationalists agreed to support this for pragmatic reasons, without any notable dedication to the supposed goals of the new cabinet post, other voices were particularly critical of Lobo Sosa for agreeing to what they see as more outside interference.

Ramon Custodio, Honduras' disfunctional Human Rights Commissioner, accuses the Lobo government of taking away his independence, and of violating his constitutional mandate with the law to create the new Secretariat.

Elvin Santos Lozano, head of the Liberal Party Central Committee, feels that Honduras is the victim

"of a gang of so-called Latin American leaders who want us under their fascist boot; and this is bringing a horrible anarchy, but unfortunately we are a country that has not jumped the Third World barrier and we will continue under their control."

Roberto Micheletti called it unconstitutional and said that it represents an abuse of power by Lobo Sosa. He reiterated that it is the ALBA countries causing the OAS to impose this on Honduras.

"Chavez will never stop insisting in the possibility to attract this country to his criteria, to his services."

But the claims that the Human Rights cabinet post is being developed because of foreign pressure are counterfactual.

It was the suggestion of Ana Pineda, Lobo Sosa's Minister/Advisor on Human Rights, who in a letter to the OAS High Commission on Honduras this summer, suggested that Honduras would consider founding a Secretariat of Human Rights and Justice. Her letter, dated the 23 of July, was included in the OAS report as annex 7.

She wrote

"The President, in the framework of the transformation of the State, has taken the decision to seek a better institutional development and not an interim space for response, in this regard, he will create a Minister of Justice and Human Rights, with the legal mandate and budget necessary so that in especially it can plan, coordinate, facilitate and implement all the actions that will be required on the national and international level in regard to Human Rights."

So the outrage about international fascist imposition on Honduras is, in the end, more posturing. But it brings out in the open what should be self-evident: there is no real commitment in the Honduran government to the mission defined for this new cabinet minister. This is just going through the motions as far as Lobo Sosa's own party is concerned. For the main opposing party, it provides a way to make some political gains against him at home, playing off the jingoistic nationalism that has been assiduously cultivated since the coup d'etat.

Only Ramon Custodio thinks this new ministry will have any real effect. And his worry is that someone else will notice that he is not doing his job.

Impunity on Impunity

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Corruption, Impunity, and the OAS High Commission

Today begins a litany of denunciations by the far right of the OAS report as covered in the pro-coup press of Honduras.

Unlike the bombast in Proceso Digital that we blogged about yesterday, these attacks are all carefully attributed to specific individuals with institutional positions lending them credibility at first glance.

In Honduras, corruption falls under the purview of the Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción, the National Anti-corruption Council. This quasi-governmental organization monitors corruption, and accepts denunciations of corruption, but does not investigate or prosecute; the responsibility for that lies with the Public Prosecutor.

The CNA consists of an Assembly composed of representatives of a 12 different civil society groups. Religion is represented both by someone from the Archbishop's office, and from the Fraternal order of Evangelical Churches. Business is represented by someone from COHEP, labor by someone from the Confederation of Workers, and so on. Funding comes as part of the regular government budget, and is supposed to be supplemented by international grants. It's director is called a coordinator.

The Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción is particularly ineffective, as the Millennium Challenge Corporation noted in its FY 2010 report, covering 2008, where Honduras scored lower than the mean in controlling corruption.

Oswaldo Canales is the representative of the Evangelical Churches of Honduras on the council. He is also the coordinator of the Honduran CNA, and was appointed to that post in October, 2009. In today's La Tribuna, Canales, asked about the OAS High Commission report in this capacity, repeated two slogans of the far right in Honduras: "the law is for everyone, equally", and "international organizations need to obey their charters and stop interfering in Honduran internal affairs".

La Tribuna writes:

Canales, although he admits he does not know all of the report of the OAS, regretted that decree "erased and [created] a new account" for presumed acts of corruption in the administration of Zelaya Rosales, this will affect the obligations which the country has with other organizations, and this when these governmental authorities had declared 2010 the year of transparency.

Meanwhile in El Heraldo, Roberto Herrera Cáceres, identified as ex Secretary General of SICA, argues that the report might violate the UN Treaty on Corruption. Herrera Caceres is a noted jurist, which for some reason is not mentioned in the article. Under the presumption of innocence introduced into Honduran jurisprudence in the last decade, opinions about cases should be formed only after they are heard. Herrera Cáceres does not speak after having studied the case against Zelaya or even the OAS report. He's making a political statement dressed up superficially in legalese.

Predictably, Luis Rubi has also come out against the report, raising the same objection in El Heraldo that somehow dismissing this charge would violate international corruption treaties. Rubi, citing the OAS Convention Against Corruption, says,

The Treaty of the OAS against corruption does not permit that these crimes be subject to amnesty.

That seemed curious to us, so we reviewed the OAS Inter American Convention Against Corruption, which can be found here. It makes no mention of amnesty. Neither does the UN Convention Against Corruption, which can be found here. The only discussion of amnesty in the context of corruption is endorsement of its use as an investigative tool in the UN Anticorruption Toolkit.

Neither body envisioned the corruption that is being practiced in Honduras now: using the courts as a political weapon.

Juan Orlando Hernandez, President of the Honduran Congress, insisted that the amnesty he helped approve in January does not apply to corruption charges, nor to violations of human rights. True, but irrelevant.

According to the OAS report, the charges at issue against Zelaya were brought under Article 17 of the Inter American Convention Against Corruption. Article 17 reads, in full

For the purposes of articles XIII, XIV, XV and XVI of this Convention, the fact that the property obtained or derived from an act of corruption was intended for political purposes, or that it is alleged that an act of corruption was committed for political motives or purposes, shall not suffice in and of itself to qualify the act as a political offense or as a common offense related to a political offense.

Which is all about determining if the act was a political offense or common offense, as it relates to Articles 13, 14, 15, 16, not in general. So what are those articles about? They are about, respectively, Extradition, Assistance and Cooperation between States, Cooperation between States regarding property, and Protecting Bank Secrecy.

The OAS report (in paragraph 3i), quoting information supposedly supplied by Porfirio Lobo Sosa, says

He made reference, nonetheless, to the cases where it is not possible to apply said law [the amnesty] in virtue because they involve accusations whose dismissal would imply a violation of Article 17 of the Inter American Convention Against Corruption which is in effect in Honduras.

Lobo uses Article 17 to say that Zelaya's crime is not covered by the amnesty, but Article 17 does not apply. It isn't relevant, since it only refers to a determination of the nature of the crime for the purpose of extradition, cooperation between states, etc (Articles 13-16). Another red herring?

Dismissing the charges against Zelaya does not, as Proceso Digital and Oswaldo Canales asserted, strengthen impunity in Honduras. The Honduran Congress already did that when it carefully crafted the amnesty bill so that it blocked prosecution of those who staged the coup. Neither the reporters behind Proceso Digital nor Canales complained about the amnesty bill.

Nor does dismissing the remaining charges against Zelaya contravene the "apply the law to everyone, equally" precept that the far right trumpets in this instance. In the international context, Honduras was not under the rule of law when the charges were brought against Zelaya, after the June 28, 2009 coup.

Corruption is a serious problem in Latin America. Honduras is no exception. However, corruption charges don't happen equally to all corrupt individuals. Instead, corruption charges can be another tool in the arsenal of those in power against their political foes. So, in Latin America, when someone is charged with corruption, it is necessary to look at who is being charged, by whom, and under what conditions.

US "dangerous approach rewards illegal and violent regime change"

The Center for Constitutional Rights has released a letter sent to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton opposing easy readmission into the OAS for Honduras. CCR is a highly credible institution; its opinion that "The human rights situation in Honduras is dire and has continued to deteriorate" represents a consensus of international human rights organizations.

The language Vincent Warren, executive director of CCR, used to characterize the US role is blunt:

The United States is taking a dangerous approach in leveraging its influence to lobby for the normalization of relations by the OAS. It rewards illegal, anti-democratic and violent regime change and should be abandoned.

CCR's letter (which you can download here) is a searing indictment summarizing clearly the evidence that the human rights situation did not turn around with the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa. From the issue of violence against journalists to the persecution of judges opposed to the coup, from Reporters Without Borders to the IACHR, the CCR letter marshals the evidence that repression and violence continue.

And it calls out Secretary Clinton for repeating the falsehood that the November election was "free and fair". Citing the Carter Center's statement when it decided it could not send observers, that

restrictions on press, protest, and movement have occurred since the presidential coup on June 28, 2009, and into the formal campaign period, impinging on the electoral rights of Hondurans

CCR shows that it understands what the requirements are for a "free and fair" election, and asks that Secretary Clinton cease the pretence that the November election met these requirements.

CCR also has the courage to call out the failure of the US government to insist on the truth, and the implication that this resulted from the influence of lobbyists:

we are concerned also about the role that a number of U.S.-based lobby and public relations consulting firms may have played in helping to muddy the waters in this respect, and the effect that may have had in shaping U.S. policy.
...
We believe that the extent to which these firms helped paint a portrait of the situation in Honduras that was at odds with the reality of the situation in order to manipulate public opinion and policy is further evidence of the anti-democratic forces at work behind the coup and should be inquired into and investigated, particularly when so many lives have been lost and affected.

Finally, the CCR exposes the truth about the "Truth Commission" (or CVR):

the mandate, methodology and scope of the CVR have been criticized from the outset by the Human Rights Platform and the Honduran civil society....Additionally, the CVR has been criticized by international human rights organizations that question its legitimacy.

CCR cites The International Center for Transitional Justice as saying

the decision to establish the commission seems to have more to do with a hasty desire to turn the page, rather than clarifying last year’s disruption of democracy and the serious crimes that took place.

The CCR concludes that

Honduras today presents a moment and an opportunity for the U.S. to proceed on the right side of history.

We wish this powerful document could move the US to at least a position of neutrality, instead of its crass pragmatic stance that winks at the coup because it is "in the past" and seeks to "put behind" the reality that Hondurans still have to live with daily.

Instead, we expect we are likely to see a continuation of the exploitative history for which the CCR calls the US to account:

an ignominious past in which Honduras was used in the Cold War era as a springboard for U.S. policy and an ill-advised, illegal and ultimately unsuccessful counterinsurgency effort in Central America that resulted in countless violations of human rights and lives lost.

We know now what motivated past interference in Honduras. For what gain now? Cui bono?

Ortez Colindres joins Lobo Sosa in admitting it was a coup

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Conversations in Washington by the Representative of Zelaya, Rodolfo Pastor F."

Vos el Soberano today posted a press release under the above title that reads as follows:

The Secretary General of the OAS, Jose Insulza, having solicited that he send his representative to talk with the OAS High Level Commission formed by the past Assembly of the organization to analyze the problem generated in Honduras by the coup d'Etat of 28-06-09, the ex-President Manuel Zelaya R. ordered me to present myself in Washington. There I attended two meetings between July 5 and 8, one meeting with the Commission as a whole and the other with the Juridical Commission of advisors, that had previously visited Honduras.

I explained our position in the meeting with the Commission of ambassadors, which is the same as the declarations of the OAS and of the authorities of almost all the governments represented in it, which is that, in Honduras on the 28th of June of 2009, there was produced a coup d'etat, underlining that, in it, there had participated in coordination the military, the Congress of that time (which accepted a falsified resignation before naming its president as Head of State), and the present Supreme Court that, in the days following the coup, generated a series of exculpatory documents for the military and a political persecution with a series of accusations against President Zelaya and against various cabinet ministers. We argued that for the present government to be able to be recognized in the assembly as the legitimate representative of our country, it would have to fulfill the demands subscribed to in the proposal of the OAS, and sustained in its democratic charter, otherwise leaving this crime unpunished as a disastrous precedent and abdication of the principles of the organization.

The conversations with Secretary Insulza coincided in

1. Arranging for the end of the judicial prosecution of ex-President Zelaya and his collaborators.

2. Commiting the present government to strengthen the Human Rights Prosecutor.

3. Proposing international accompaniment in the fight against impunity.

4. Enlargening the Truth Commission formed by the government, with a representative to be proposed by the opposition; and

5. Convening a broad National Dialogue, with genuine representation of the opposition and with an open agenda to study the right to the Constitutional Assembly process.

Secretary Insulza informed me without details that President Lobo had sent his own representative but he didn't accept that agreed to [above]. That they were additionally accusing the ex-President, of a payment for publicity and for the investment to finance the logistics of the poll about the Cuarta Urna, which had been indispensable in view of the fact that the military did not return the money they were given for that purpose, when they rebelled two days before the Coup. That is to say that the present government, elected without opposition, under a State of Emergency and without the observation of the OAS nor any official international organization demands that ex-President Zelaya should submit himself, for these accusations, to the justice of the perpetrators and sponsors of the coup that was carried out against him. That they would give him the grace to permit himself to defend himself outside the jail. Secretary Insulza did not explain what would be the proposal for international accompaniment for the struggle against the impunity that the Coup participants enjoy and explained that President Lobo wished that it would be the official Truth Commission itself that would incorporate a representative of the opposition.

It was expressed to the Secretary and the Commission our agreement that, by different procedures, the same end could be arrived at and that what worried us, above all, was the state of defenselessness of Hondurans against the everyday violations and crimes against humanity, certified by its own Commission on Human Rights, about which they were not ruling given that-- due to the complicity of the Public Prosecutor and the judiciary in the coup-- the conditions to put a brake on these abuses or deduce responsibilities did not exist. But he was reminded that the agreement was the end of persecution.

The jurists that have studied the accusations assured us that they have progressed in the discussion with the Prosecutor and the Court in Honduras, but they repeated that, for formality's sake, the President would have to present himself before this judiciary, to ask that it grant him amnesty, and submit himself to trial for the two remaining accusations. To them as well it was explained that the ex-President could submit himself to justice for any accusation made before the day of the coup or before any international judicial body that would offer the conditions of objectivity, but he would not humiliate himself before the court that had administered him the coup d'etat. Later, and at the end of our visit and in view of the fact that agreement had not advanced, we presented before the High Commission a Position Paper, prepared personally by ex-President Manuel Zelaya, today coordinator of the National Resistance Front, demanding that the OAS act in congruence with its Democratic Charter (whose substance is the right of the people), with its own reiterated declarations, and with its commitment not to recognize the government as long as the situation created by the coup is not reversed and full rights have not been restored.

Since then Secretary General Insulza has traveled throughout Latin America lobbying its governments to accept Honduras by majority vote, dismissing those that oppose it, and has lobbied recently in the meeting of SICA in El Salvador in which, despite the fact that the norms of the organization demand a total consensus, in the absence of a country and of three of the presidents, President Funes announced the reincorporation of Porfirio Lobo in the System and solicited, as had been announced many times that he would for pragmatism, the reincorporation of its representative in the OAS.

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.