Protests, Claims of Conspiracy Against Juan Orlando Hernández

Juan Orlando Hernández, elected President of Honduras in November 2013 with about 37% of the popular vote, has ruled as if he had an electoral mandate.

For the last couple of weeks, however, things have been a little rougher in JOH's Honduras. Rough enough that English language media have taken notice.  

The International Business Times covered the story with a headline "Juan Orlando Hernandez Resignation Scandal", summarizing the issues concisely:

Hondurans demanded the resignation of President Juan Orlando Hernandez Wednesday during demonstrations across the violence plagued capital city of Tegucigalpa. Protesters outside the National Congress questioned Hernandez's involvement in a social security scam involving some of the nation's most influential businesspeople and politicians...

The Honduran Institute of Social Security funding scam allegedly involved officials transferring large sums of money from the nation's federal coffers to the ruling National Party during the 2013 presidential elections.

The Tico Times adds that the Partido Nacional is accused

of having accepted approximately $90 million from IHSS to finance Hernández’s campaign in 2013, a cut of more than $300 million in diverted funds from the IHSS.

The investigation of corruption at the IHSS is ongoing. What has been alleged, citing the Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción, is that funds were paid to false-front businesses that provided no services. Some of these businesses then wrote checks to the central committee of the Partido Nacional, which used the proceeds to fund the presidential campaign, according to Salvador Nasralla, leader of the Partido Anti-Corrupción.

Consejo Nacional Anticorrupción (CNA

Leer más en: http://www.elheraldo.hn/pais/710497-214/entre-320-personas-se-repartieronel-multimillonario-desfalco-al-ihss
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The allegation that a large part of the money diverted financed Hernández' presidential campaign has fueled demands that he step down.

Which leads to the strangest part of this story: the pushback, which has tried to recast this all as plotting to undermine the president, even to carry out a military coup.

As the IHSS scandal was unfolding Marvin Ponce, a former member of the Honduran Congress, and current advisor to the president, claimed that there was a "conspiracy" to spread rumors about JOH involving the US government:

I am glimpsing a dangerous thing. There is a high profile TV company in the country that has had meetings in the Department of State and with the Department of Justice. They have initiated a very strong campaign against the president. What we are seeing is that there is a campaign through two routes, David Romero [a prominent Honduran broadcaster] with accusations, and on the other side a strong strategy by other powerful sectors of the country to force him to yield and to avoid his seeking re-election."

Ponce's claims of US involvement are, to be charitable, questionable. They would require us to credit that preventing presidential re-election (recently authorized by the Honduran Supreme Court) is more important to US foreign policy than supporting a government doing precisely what the US calls for in security, immigration, and economic policy.

But even these claims do not hold a candle to other rumors about supposed plotting against JOH.

These came from Hugo Maldonado, the current head of Honduras' Human Rights Commission, who claimed that political opponents of the Honduran president were conspiring to remove him in a coup d'etat.

The ex-head of the Honduran Armed Forces, Romeo Vasquez Velasquez-- who actually was responsible for the execution of the 2009 Honduran coup-- denied the charge vigorously, and colorfully:

He shouldn't go making things up, unless my wife and I alone are going to carry out a coup d'Etat. I'm not in the Armed Forces-- who am I supposed to commit a coup with?

That wasn't the only reporting that waded into dubious waters.

The Honduran paper La Tribuna published an article-- really more like a political speech by a very enthusiastic supporter of the Partido Nacional-- on May 14. In between boasting about the strength of the PN and of JOH, it sketches out a supposed plot fueled by methamphetamine use, backdated to March, in which political advisors to José Manuel Zelaya supposedly outlined a campaign to undermine Hernández, amazingly, through public protests in May about corruption.

The conspiracy allegedly involved David Romero, and Salvador Nasralla of the Partido Anti-Corrupción as well, thus tidily blackening the reputations of all three.

The one thing in this lurid story that has some truth to it is that both PAC and LIBRE are calling for JOH to resign due to the IHSS scandal.

Meanwhile, the Tico Times estimated 5000 people took part in the latest march in Tegucigalpa, a night-time torchlit rally that was supported by both LIBRE and the Partido Anti-Corrupción.

Investigations of the IHSS continue; and for his part, JOH is trying to stay above the fray, while his party launches counter-accusations, smearing opponents and suing Salvador Nasralla for "defamation".

Last Polls in Honduran Presidential Election: Dead Heat

In Honduras, it is illegal to poll the last month before the presidential election.

Today El Heraldo published the results of the latest, and last, CID Gallup poll in the presidential race.

Their headline: At one month before the elections, JOH one point advantage over Xiomara.

Our headline: Honduran Presidential Election Enters Final Stage in a Statistical Tie.

Based on polling conducted October 6-15, the CID Gallup poll reportedly finds voters who intend to vote breaking 28% for the Partido Nacional (Juan Orlando Hernández), 27% for LIBRE (Xiomara Castro), 17% for the Partido Liberal (Mauricio Villeda), and 9% for the Anti-Corruption Party (Salvador Nasrallah), with 3% each for the candidacies of Andres Pavon and Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, and a reported 3% "do not know/declined to respond".

The absolute numbers in these Gallup polls are always higher than those in other polls, apparently because they are not including the voters who say they may not vote. The trends are clear when we look at the Gallup polling data over time: Nasralla continues to slide down; Villeda has drawn a small number of voters as the Anti-Corruption party declined; but the main increase tracking the decreases in the Anti-Corruption Party is in the institutional Partido Nacional.

There is evidence in this latest poll, as there was previously in the fine grained data from CESPAD, that party affiliation is breaking down. While the Liberal Party was identified as the party affiliation by 22% of those polled, Villeda draws only 17% of the vote. Similarly, while Hernández has a reported 28% of the intended vote, 35% of those polled identified as Partido Nacional members.

CID Gallup doesn't let us speculate on where those other Partido Liberal and Nacional voters are going; CESPAD, though, showed in August that 23% of Liberal Party voters then favored LIBRE, as did 7.6% of Partido Nacional voters not favoring Hernández, with almost the same number then planning to vote for Nasrallah.

El Heraldo's story reports on a number of other polls, some of which, like Paradigma, we have been steadily tracking. These minor polls range from one by Opinión y Analísis that has Hernández at 28.1%, Castro at 23%, and Villeda at 20.1%; to TecniMerk showing Castro winning with 31.9%, Hernández at 22.8%, and Villeda at 13.2%.

While these two minor polls should be questioned due to the wide margins of victory they project, not seen in other polls, they are at least consistent with the other polling that shows LIBRE and the Partido Nacional running head to head. A third minor poll mentioned by El Heraldo, from a firm called Inteligence, seems anything but credible, as it is alone in having the Partido Liberal ahead, with 34.8% of the vote, leading the Partido Nacional at 28.33% and supposedly showing LIBRE in third place at 16,15%. It is almost as if this poll inadvertently reversed LIBRE and the Partido Liberal.

One of these candidates will receive the most votes in November. If election monitoring prevents fraud-- a big if in Honduras-- that same candidate will become the next president.

The current polling data do not allow identification of a clear leader, but do tell us that the traditional two party system has been effectively challenged for the first time in Honduran history: LIBRE and the Partido Nacional are the clear leaders vying for control of the presidency, and one of these did not exist at the time of the last election.

Whatever the outcome, the political landscape has changed in Honduras.

New July Polling in the Presidential Race

A friend dropped the 5th CESPAD survey of public opinion in Honduras in our in box, this one for July, 2013.  CESPAD is the Centro de Estudios para la Democracia, and came into existence in 2010.  Since then they've been performing polling on Honduran public sentiment.

In this case we're talking about a survey of 1,440 individuals over 18 years of age in a probabilistic, stratified, multi-stage sample between July 21 and July 31 of 2013.  They report margin of error of plus or minus 2.5%.

The survey focused on a number of topics.  This post will report on the sections about the November, 2013 elections; there will be more on other topics to come.

CESPAD found that these people plan to vote.

Overall, 80.3% of those surveyed said they intend to vote. Honduras typically has a voter turnout around 50-55%.

CESPAD asked respondents who planned to vote what party they would vote for in 2013.  Here's the results

     Libre           26.7%
     National      24.1%
     Liberal        16.6%
     PAC            10.2%
     Nobody       12.3%
     No Answer   8.6%


Every other party was less than one percent (Sorry Romeo!).

Over the last two years of polling, CESPAD found that the number of people who would vote for the National Party and Liberal Party has steadily declined. In the current election, the percentage who intend to vote for Libre and Partido Anti-Corrupción (PAC) take up the slack.

The popularity of each party's presidential candidate is similar to, but not the same as, the party popularity:

     Xiomara Castro (Libre)                     28.0%
     Juan Orlando Hernandez (National)   20.7%
     Mauricio Villeda (Liberal)                  13.7%
     Salvador Nasralla  (PAC)                  11.7%
     Undecided                                       17.8%
     Nobody                                             6.8%
     Romeo Vasquez (Alianza)                   0.7%
     Orles Anibal (Christian Democrat)       0.3%
     Andres Pavon (FAPER)                       0.2%
     Jorge Aguilar ( PINU)                         0.1%


Like other polling, CESPAD's numbers indicate that Hondurans could elect a president in November who receives far less than 50% of the vote. This could create serious complications for governing, depending on the composition of the Congress.

CESPAD notes that this is essentially a two-person race between Xiomara Castro and Juan Orlando Hernandez, both of whom have seen rising support over the last six months.  CESPAD concludes that the data suggest a reconfiguration of electoral politics is underway in Honduras, but the trends aren't yet definitive.

More interesting still is where each candidate's support comes from.

Slightly less than half of Liberal Party members surveyed said they would vote for the Party's candidate, Mauricio Villeda.  Xiomara Castro picks up support from 23.1% of them, and Undecided/Nobody a further 16.7%.  Nasralla and Hernandez pick up minor amounts of support here as well.

The National Party is a bit more cohesive, with 58.4% of National Party members saying they'd vote for Juan Orlando Hernandez, the party's candidate, and a further 20.8% Undecided or Nobody.  Villeda, Castro, and Nasralla pick up minor amounts of support among National Party members.

PAC is still more coherent than the National Party, with 81.9% of party members saying they will vote for their party's candidate, Salvador Nasralla, and a further 11% being either undecided or planning to vote for none of the above. Villeda, Hernandez, and Castro each pick up single digit support among PAC members.

Libre appears to be the most cohesive party, with 94% of its members going to vote for Xiomara Castro, the party candidate, and only 3.8% undecided. Villeda, Hernandez, and Vasquez each pick up support from less than one percent of Libre's members.

CESPAD concludes that a real effect of the 2009 coup has been to disrupt the two party system in Honduras.

Party fidelity appears to be the casualty, in line with party fidelity trends in other latin american countries. Only a third of respondents said they would never vote for a party they didn't belong to.  Over 50% said they might vote for the candidate of a party they didn't belong to, and nearly 20% said for sure they would be doing so this time.

The better educated the voter, the more likely they intend to vote for Castro or Nasralla.  The traditional parties do best with those with little or no education.

The take-away from this poll, as in others, is that the real race is between Libre's Xiomara Castro and Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National Party.  Villeda does not seem to be a viable candidate, and he loses a nearly a quarter of his party to Xiomara Castro.  Party loyalty suffered in the National Party as well, and Hernandez has less than 60% of his party behind him.  In order to win the presidential election, he will need stronger support from Nationalists.

Nasralla is running well with a consistent 11-15% of the electorate supporting him-- not enough to be elected, but enough to suggest his platform resonates.

These numbers bear no resemblance to those reported by Paradigma for July. Both polls show the candidates in the same order. The differences in absolute numbers may lie in how questions were asked, and the sampling strategy of each polling group.

Paradigma now reports the results of its August survey.  It shows Libre, the National Party, and the Liberal party numbers up, with Nasralla and none of the above falling:

     None of the Above  27.0%
     Xiomara Castro       22.9%
     J Orlando Hernandez 19.9%
     Salvador Nasralla    10.3%
     Mauricio Villeda       9.4%

Variations of 2-3% from the July poll results are within the margin of error of the poll, so none of these changes are significant.

Neither polling company has been through an election cycle in Honduras yet, so we don't know how they'll fare against actual election results.

All the polls, though, are telling the same story: a fractured electorate, a surging new party (Libre), and a sinking old one (Liberal).

And They're Off: Honduran Presidential Campaign Begins

San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa are festooned with vast quantities of political campaign signs this morning as Monday marked the official start of the campaign to elect a new president, congress, and 298 municipal governments.  These signs encode the party they represent through the use of colors:  red and black for Libre, yellow and red for the Democratic Unification Party, blue for the National Party, red and white for the Liberal Party, and so on.

In the most recent poll by Paradigma, Xiomara Castro maintains her lead (although almost half the electorate expressed no support for any of the declared candidates):

Xiomara Castro                19.8%
Juan Hernandez               16.7%
Mauricio Villeda                 7.0%
Salvador Nasralla               6.2%
Andres Pavon                     0.6%
Romeo Vasquez                  0.4%
Jorge Aguilar                      0.2%
Orle Solis                           0.2%
Not reporting/Not Stated    17.5%
None of the Above             31.4%

The poll,  of 2,429 individuals in 16 departments in Honduras between July 16 and July 30, has a margin of error of 2%.  Some Honduran press sources inflated Hernandez' numbers in publishing the results, rounding him up to 17% (or more).

While candidates have, so far, said little of substance, here's a list of eight presidential candidates and the positions they've adopted:

1. Juan Orlando Hernandez - National Party.  Political pundits, who uniformly dismiss the new political parties, consider him the candidate to beat.  Hernandez championed the new military police, and has indicated that we should expect more militarization of the police should he win office.  He's been an advocate of privatization of government resources and income streams during his term as head of Congress.

2. Mauricio Villeda - Liberal Party.  After nearly half of the Liberal party left to form Libre, that left a power vacuum which was filled by the extremely conservative wing of the party, typified by the leader of the coup-installed de facto government, Roberto Micheletti, and Mauricio Villeda. Villeda has come out against corruption, and for more extradition of Hondurans involved in international organized crime.  He's against gay marriage in Honduras.  Villeda promised change in 15 years, well beyond his term limit.  Most of Villeda's attention has been on disparaging Libre and Xiomara Castro.  Villeda, third in the polls, unlike Hernandez and Castro has not seen his popularity increase in the last six months.

3. Salvador Nasralla - Anti-Corruption Party.  He's told the business community in Honduras that he believes in free enterprise, but also in them paying their taxes.  Nasralla, on being asked to sign an agreement to abide by the results of the election implied he would call the electorate to insurrection should there be indications of widespread fraud.  Nasralla has intimated that election credentials were being traded and sold, causing the legal representative of PAPH (another new party, started by former Armed Forces commander Romeo Vasquez Velasquez) to demand he prove his accusations.  Nasralla has advocated for the military to return to their barracks and to cease any policing role.

4. Xiomara Castro - Partido de Libertad y Refundación. (LIBRE),  Castro would continue with the assistance programs to poor families begun under the Lobo Sosa administration.  But instead of continuing with the neo-liberal economic policies that have been dismantling the Honduran economy and leading to greater inequality and poverty, she proposes economic policies that would dismantle the monopolies created in the last 20 years and provide equal access to capital, both from private banks, and from the government.  In addition she's open to and welcomes foreign investment and technology transfer, as long as it respects Honduran sovereignty and laws.  She would re-implement the technology bonds meant to allow campesinos to modernize their farming techniques, originally introduced under José Manuel Zelaya.  Most of all, she emphasizes that this is not a campaign about leftists and rightists:

"Those that supported the coup d'etat, the constitutional crisis, the destruction of the rule of law, the destruction of democracy accusing us of being communists and radical leftists are the only ones interested in ideologically polarizing this campaign.....We of Libre, represent exactly the opposite."

This is a swipe at Hernandez, Vasquez, and Villeda, all of whom have been accusing her of being a radical leftist who is going to bring communism into Honduras.  Castro advocated that the military be returned to their barracks and cease their policing duties.

5. Romeo Vasquez Velasquez - Honduran Patriotic Alliance (PAPH) - Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, retired head of the armed forces of Honduras and a leader of the 2009 coup, is running with a promise to provide security and halt illegal activity. He says he's running to prevent chaos and bloodshed in the country.  Vasquez was mocked during the signing of an accord to protect human rights with catcalls of "murderer" by members of two other new parties, FAPER and Libre, which caused him to claim they disrespected him and to ask what happened to human rights for those who aren't leftist.

6. Andres Pavon - Frente Amplio Político Electoral en Resistencia (FAPER) and the Unificación Democratica Party (UD).  Pavon told the Cortés Chamber of Commerce that he is for jobs, security, and dialogue.  Pavon is vocally in favor of gay marriage.  He proposed small hydroelectric dams to improve electricity generation without the population displacement and investment needed for larger projects.  He is a proponent of biodiesel to decrease Honduran imports of petroleum.  Pavon agrees with the current Plan de la Nacion (a 20 year set of goals created under the current government) but proposes they need to be updated with participatory socialism (or what got Zelaya overthrown).

7. Orle Solis - Christian Democrats. Solis has promised to modernize the government and especially to bring government aid to modernizing agricultural production.  She also promised to reduce migration to the cities

8. Jorge Aguilar - Partido de Innovación y Unidad Social Demócrata (PINU).  Aguilar promised to reduce the government deficit from 13% to 3% in 2014 by making government more efficient and modern.  He proposes that there's more government income to be had simply from improving collections of taxes (something the current government has not been able to do, leaving an estimated 40% in the hands of businesses).  Aguilar also emphasized security.

There you have it. Eight candidates, nine parties, four of them new, with the lead close between the traditional party in power and the most populist of the new parties. Under Honduran law, the top vote recipient becomes the president: no run off needed, no minimum level of popular support.

The next three months should be interesting...

Where have all the voters gone?

Voters in Honduras are increasingly dissatisfied with the choices the political parties have given them for Presidential candidates.

That's the real conclusion of a new poll taken by Encuestadora Paradigma.  The poll, involving 2,292 interviews of voting age individuals in 16 departments in Honduras, carried out between the 14th and 23rd of April, has a 2.2% margin or error at the 95% confidence interval.

The poll, the third this year from Encuestadora Paradigma, asked "if the election of 2013 were today, who would you vote for among the candidates listed, for president?"

Here's the results:

Xiomara Castro                  19.7%
Juan O. Hernandez           13.3%
Mauricio Villeda                10.2%
Salvador Nasralla               9.9%
Not Stated/No Response   20.1%
None of the Above            26.4%

Support for everyone else, including Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, together accounted for a grand total of 0.4%. 

Assuming the sample is actually representative, this would tend to indicate Xiomara Castro, of the Libre party, is really leading all her competitors for president, since the difference between her and the next polled candidate is substantially more than the margin of error.

Other leading candidates aren't buying it.

Mauricio Villeda, candidate for the Liberal party, says his own internal polls, conducted by Borge & Asociados, show him in the lead over everyone else running.

Juan Orlando Hernandez of the National party says pretty much the same thing.

Ecuestadora Paradigma offers data from consecutive months of polling for February, March, and April of this year.

The trends in their results are interesting.  All of the candidates, with the exception of Nasralla, have lost popularity over this period. 

Hernandez has lost 4.7 points, falling from 18.6% in February to 13.3% in April, Castro has lost 5.3 points, going from 25% in February to 19.7% in April.  Villeda lost 2.7% going from 12.9% in February to 10.2% in April. Nasralla has gained 0.2% over the same interval, which is well within the range to simply be statistical noise.

So where have the voters gone?

The number of None of the Above, and No Response/Decline to State have increased in each monthly poll.  The percentage of people choosing No Response/Decline to State increased by 7.2%, while the percentage of people selecting None of the Above grew 7.8%. That means that 15% of the electorate decided to abandon their support for a defined candidate over the course of three months.

Encuestadora Paradigma gives the political party membership for respondents. These numbers should make Juan O. Hernandez and Mauricio Villeda afraid. Their constituencies, the Liberal and National party members, made up slightly more than 45% of the respondents, yet combined, only 23.5% of the respondents say they will vote for these candidates. Where are the other 21.5% of members of these traditional leading parties?

One answer: to the new alternative parties that formed in the wake of the 2009 coup.

Xiomara Castro's popularity extends beyond the 13% of the sample composed of Libre party members, as does Nasralla's popularity, which is clearly broader than the 3.2% of respondents who say they belong to his party. 

But the change in the political landscape may be more than this.  More than a third of voters polled by Encuestadora Paradigma, 38.2%, reported not belonging to any political party. 

The take away: Xiomara Castro is undisputably the front runner in this poll, as she has been in all three of Encuestadora Paradigma's polls.

So far, only two candidates are showing a broader appeal beyond their own party, both in newly formed parties. Castro and Nasralla have shown an ability to appeal to voters beyond their party.

Meanwhile the candidates of the traditional two leading parties, Hernandez and Villeda, are not managing to capture the support of all of their party members, let alone enough voters from outside to indicate one would win if the election were held today. 

Getting the support of the large block of independent voters, and getting them to vote, will be the challenge for whichever candidate wants to win the election in November. There is a long time between now and then-- but this is not how Honduran presidential politics used to work.

Honduran Poll: None Of The Above Winning

Le Vote, a private market research firm has the results of an opinion poll they did on the presidential candidates for November's presidential election.  Here's what they report:

Xiomara Castro                  30%
Salvador Nasralla               28%
Juan O. Hernandez             26%
Mauricio Villeda                  16%

Le Vote says nothing about the size of the sample, the uncertainty, or the method used for obtaining the result. 
But there's an even larger problem with these numbers.  There are no undecideds or "decline to state". Reporting suggests that is significant.

According to El Heraldo, Le Vote said that 15% of the respondents didn't know or declined to state a preference, while 22.33% said "none of the above".  Further, El Heraldo reports that the real percentages reported by Le Vote differ from what's reported on Le Vote's own website, where apparently the results are rounded to the nearest integer. 

Le Vote is giving us a lesson in how to screw up reporting polling data.

Correcting using using El Heraldo's non-rounded percentages of those polled, totaling 66.77%, would look like this, organized by popularity:

None of the Above       22.3300 %
Xiomara Castro            19.8975 %
Salvador Nasralla         18.4686 %
Juan O. Hernandez       17.4003 %
Undecided/Not Stating  15.0000 %
Mauricio Villeda            11.0103 %

So, None of the Above would win if the election were held today, and by any normal polling margin of error, we cannot discriminate the placement of the next several candidates (Xiomara Castro, Salvador Nasralla, or Juan O. Hernandez). 

Undecided leads Villeda, the Liberal Party candidate, by a significant amount.  Villeda continues to show that the Liberals are definitely at the rear of the field for major political parties, but even he is leading over Romeo Vasquez Velasquez who failed to register in the poll.

Not even a majority of post coup Liberal Party supports their candidate according to Le Vote, which says Villeda has only has 39% support among Liberals.  Libre party candidate Xiomara Castro has 11% of the Liberal Party member's vote in the same poll.
This pattern is also true in the National Party, where less than a majority of those members surveyed supported Juan Orlando Hernandez, their own party's candidate for president, with 44% of the National Party members saying they support him. 

These weak levels of support for the two traditional party candidates contrast with 98% of Libre supporting its candidate, Xiomara Castro.

But the political parties are not of equal size.  The National Party forms about 32% of the electorate, according to Le Vote, while the post coup Liberal Party is less than half that size, at 15%.

Libre is slightly smaller, at 14%, while the Anti-Corruption Party of Salvador Nasralla is a tiny 6%. 

Le Vote reports that 31% of the electorate is not registered with any party.  The results reported by Le Vote show that Xiomara Castro and Salvador Nasralla are doing well among those independent voters, while Juan O. Hernandez is not.

The high "none of the above" value in the poll, though, indicates most Hondurans dissatisfaction with all of the candidates. The question is, will those citizens vote-- and if so, for whom?

Can Hondutel Be Saved?

Hondutel, the Honduran national telephone company, is in trouble. Big trouble.

As wired telephones become less important in residences and businesses in Honduras, Hondutel's income has fallen significantly; its income in 2011 was 2489.7 million lempiras (about $131.3 million dollars).  At the same time its costs rose to 2583.2 million lempiras (about $136.3 million dollars).  Since January, 2010, Hondutel has added over 1200 new employees, an increase of 33%, and those employees have received salary increases over the last two years.

It is unclear whether this poor economic performance will have any impact on the presidential aspirations of Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, the candidate for the newly formed right-wing political party, the Patriotic Alliance of Honduras.

Vasquez Velasquez, notorious for his role in the kidnapping of former president José Manuel Zelaya during the 2009 coup, was rewarded on retiring with the directorship of Hondutel, a role for which his military service manifestly has not prepared him.

President Porfirio Lobo Sosa has appointed a commission to suggest ways in which Hondutel, the state telecommunications company, can be made solvent. The commission can collect information and make suggestions. Vasquez Velasquez, however, remains in charge.

Losses at Hondutel are not new.  They've been going on for years.

They have become important now because as part of a new agreement with the IMF for stand-by funds, the Honduran government must present a balanced budget plan and show that it can and is sticking to it.

The new commission, headed by Hector Guillen, the Finance Minister, has 30 days to make recommendations.  Guillen made it clear that Hondutel is looking for strategic investors.  Over the last several years, several international telecommunications companies have expressed interest in a strategic partnership or outright purchase of the state-owned company. This never worked out, due to the lack of a mechanism to allow private investment in state-owned companies.

Guillen said it will be up to the commission to find a structure that makes such investment possible. Whether they find interested investors or not, Honduras continues to be not just open for business, but up for sale.

Registration of Slates of Candidates

On Wednesday, all factions in all the political parties in Honduras had to register their slate of candidates for national, departmental, and local office.  In all, some 21 movements within the political parties registered slates of candidates. 

There were a few surprises.

LIBRE, the political party formed earlier this year from groups within the resistance, consists of five groups:
28th of June Movement (headed by Carlos Zelaya)
the Popular Revolutionary Force (headed by Juan Barahona)
the Progressive Resistance Movement (headed by Rasel Tomé)
the People Organized in Resistance (headed by Mauricio Ramos)
the 5th of July Movement (headed by Nelson Avila)

LIBRE had wanted to declare Xiomara Castro de Zelaya as their consensus candidate, but Honduran law requires there to be a primary election to select candidates for every level of office within each political party.  So all five groups listed Xiomara Castro de Zelaya as their presidential candidate, and a retired police commissioner, Maria Luisa Borjas, as candidate for Mayor of Tegucigalpa. 

The Liberal Party this year consists of 3 movements:  Yanismo (candidate:  Yani Rosenthal), the United Liberal Front (Esteban Handel) and the Liberal Villedista Movement (Mauricio Villeda, memorable for his role as a Micheletti representative in failed negotiations for a solution after the coup of 2009).

The Nationalist Party this year fragmented into 8 movements:  the Blue Heart Movement (candidate:  Eva Fernandez), Saving Honduras (Ricardo Alvarez, current Mayor of Tegucigalpa),  For a New Honduras (Loreley Fernandez), the Authentic Nationalist Movement (Fernando Anduray), the United Blue Movement (Juan Orlando Hernandez, head of Congress), the Movement for my Country (Miguel Pastor),  The Democratic Reserve Movement (Jose Osorto), and the Barnica Action Movement (Víctor Hugo Barnica).  Only three of these (Alvarez, Hernandez, and Pastor) are considered to have a chance at the nomination.

In addition, there is the Anticorruption Party (candidate:  Salvador Nasralla) and the Patriotic Alliance of Honduras (Romeo Vásquez Vélasquez).

The Frente Amplio Politico Electoral en Resistencia (FAPER) has two movements:  Solidarity, Organization and Struggle (Andres Pavon, of the human rights organization CODEH),  and the Movimiento Amplio Reformista (Guadalupe Coello).

The Christian Democrat Party has a single movement, the Christian Democrats in Action Movement (still selecting a candidate).

There were no reports of slates of candidates for the UD Party.  Previous reports indicated that the UD party was considering an alliance with LIBRE, or perhaps FAPER. Also no report of any slate for the PINU party.

In all, more than 53,000 people will be proposed for political office across all the parties in Honduras.  All of these individuals will compete in the primary election, to be held on November 18, 2012. Because of the addition of new parties and movements within them, the level of participation is higher than in previous elections.

And that creates a problem. 

To support all the parties and movements, the Honduran Supreme Electoral Tribunal needs 40,000 rooms spread across the country to host the election, and they are short some 18,337 rooms.  Furthermore, some of the locations already contracted don't have sufficient rooms for all the parties.

The parties have until August 6 to continue to submit changes to their lists of candidates, and the Election Tribunal will rule on accepting both the movements and their candidates by August 26, 2012.

Patriotic Alliance of Honduras

There's a new political party in town. It will take the baby steps needed to found a new party this coming Tuesday. The Patriotic Alliance of Honduras (Alianza Patriotica de Honduras), a party founded by ex-military officers to support the presidential candidacy of their candidate, retired general Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, submits their 55,000 signatures (La Prensa says 90,000 but everyone else says 55,000) to the Supreme Election Court (Tribunal Supremo Electoral). Vásquez Velásquez will be familiar to readers of this blog as a significant force behind the 2009 coup.

Participating in the handing over of the party charter and electoral materials will be the retired generals José René Oliva and José Barahona Pérez, and the retired coronels Jordi Montañola, Allan Castillo, Gilberto Rivera y Lima Bueso. Montañola told La Tribuna that one of the goals of the party is to "rescue Honduras from ruins, to put it on a road to progress for all Hondurans without exception." The new party claims the support of all reservists and like minded Hondurans. It did not publish its charter or goals.

Inside Honduras the headlines were informative. La Tribuna said "The party of Romeo Vasquez Velasquez will present 55,000 signatures to the TSE," and El Heraldo said "The Political Alliance of Honduras initiates its road to power;" but Proceso Digital was more tentative, titling it "General who participated in the exit of Zelaya will seek to be president." Outside of Honduras, coverage was more blunt, generally adopting the wording of sources like Univision and Estrategia y Negocios: "Golpista military officer will seek the presidency of Honduras in 2013."

This brings to 3 the number of new political parties registered this year for the 2013 elections.

Definitive Verdict: Final Answer?

Remember when Romeo Vásquez Velásquez and the other generals were "tried" for kidnapping President Zelaya and forcibly sending him to Costa Rica back in 2009? The Public Prosecutor eventually lodged a case against them, and that case was heard by the Chief Justice, Jorge Rivera Áviles, who found them not guilty.

Well, that case is back.

The case was brought after Porfirio Lobo Sosa assumed the presidency in January 2010, and heard last January. Rivera Aviles handed down a definitive verdict of "not guilty".

The Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubí appealed, lost, and appealed again and got a split decision. The Supreme Court appeals panel that heard the case, the 5 judges of the Constitutional branch of the court, could not agree on a verdict. Four voted to uphold the verdict, and 1 voted to reject it. They had to be unanimous in their decision to reach a verdict.

So the case moves to the entire Supreme Court for them to try and reach a verdict. Today the entire Supreme Court will meet and vote on this case. Tomas Arita Valle, the judge who issued the arrest order for Zelaya, will preside over this hearing. The court can issue a definitive and final verdict, or remand the case to a panel to study the options and make recommendations.

The Supreme Court split, 10 to 5, on the issue of punishing the judges later fired for supporting Zelaya. I can't imagine the decision today will be all that different.

Putting the "General" in General Election

It is (semi) official.

Romeo Vasquez Velasquez, infamous as the general who commanded the armed forces during the coup d'etat in June 2009 and throughout the de facto regime of Roberto Micheletti when the military brutalized the Honduran people, wants to be the next president of Honduras.

Prensa Latina reports that Vasquez will run at the head of the Alianza Patriótica Hondureña party. To be able to run, his advisers are reportedly telling him to resign this October from his post-military position as manager of Hondutel, a plum post given to him after he stepped down from the military.

The same advisers suggest that if he does run, he risks the re-activation of legal actions against him for the forcible (and illegal) removal from Honduras of José Manuel Zelaya Rosales. They are quoted as saying

"The politicians created the crisis, so it would not be strange if they exculpated themselves and for their political relaunching they would implicate the military".

Despite this danger, Prensa Latina reports that Vasquez will register as the candidate of the Alianza Patriótica Hondureña and start his run for president in October, the month of the Armed Forces. The article describes APH as "a military-civic organization that intends to 'rescue the country from underdevelopment'".

The new report comes shortly on the heels of stories in the Honduran press saying that the Christian Democrat Party was thinking of drafting Vasquez Velasquez as its candidate. These rumors were sparked by a birthday visit with Ramón Velásquez Názar, vice-president of the Christian Democrat Party.

A background in the armed forces has not, until now, been a recommendation for candidates for president under the constitution adopted in Honduras in the 1980s. But then, the coup and its aftermath clearly changed the role of the military in modern Honduras. Ex-army officers running for president probably goes along with the rest of the package.

Hugo Llorens in the Run-up to the Coup d'Etat

Wikileaks has released another cable from Ambassador Hugo Llorens to the US State Department, this one dated June 26, 2009 and covering the events of the night of June 25, 2009, three days before the military carried out a coup d'etat.

A Spanish translation of the cable was published by Tiempo, although none of the other Honduran papers seem to be motivated to cover it.

In the summary paragraph, Llorens reports:

On the evening of June 25, the National Congress came close to bringing to the floor a vote on the removal of President Zelaya from office.

We already knew this. We were in Honduras watching events unfold on television, and we had been told to expect something like that.

Ambassador Llorens discusses how he and other senior US diplomats in the country worked to deter Congress from taking this step. He reports that they successfully deflected Congress into opening an inquiry into President Zelaya's possible legal violations. We believe this is the first confirmation of the rumored role of the Ambassador in ending the rush toward a vote by the Honduran Congress that night.

Immediately following the passage above, Llorens goes on to write

Supreme Court President Rivera told us that Congress does not have the power to impeach the President, since the repeal of such a law in 2005. Currently the only means to remove a sitting President is through the filing of a criminal case filed by the Public Ministry with the Supreme Court itself.

In other words, the Chief Justice of the Honduran Supreme Court told Ambassador Llorens on June 25, 2009, that Congress had no power to impeach a sitting President.

Notice that this cable is sent the same day, Friday May 26, that the filing by prosecutor Luis Rubí of criminal charges against Zelaya before the Supreme Court is dated as accepted by the court (Zelaya government members say this document was actually produced later and back-dated).

This is what later serves as the purported legal grounding for removing Zelaya from office, and replacing him with Roberto Micheletti.

The timing seems, at the very least, interesting.

Justice Rivera's analysis of how one can legally remove a sitting Honduran President matched our own arguments in the wake of the military kidnapping of Zelaya on Sunday, June 28.

In paragraph 4 of the cable, Llorens makes it clear when his conversation with Justice Rivera Aviles took place:

In a meeting on June 25, Honduran Supreme Court President Jorge Rivera Aviles told the Ambassador that he was extremely worried about the planned Congressional action against the President. Rivera said that congressional leaders had approached him about their plans to remove the President. Rivera said he advised against such action, which he described as illegal. Rivera said that in 2005 the Congress repealed the impeachment law. Currently the only means to remove a President was through the filing of a criminal case by the Public Ministry (Attorney General) with the Supreme Court. In such circumstances, the Supreme Court would appoint a Supreme Court Magistrate to hear the case. A ruling by the Magistrate against the President represented the only means to legally separate him/her from the office.

Thus the Supreme Court's opinion confirms that when the Honduran Congress pretended to remove President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales on June 29, 2009, it was a patently illegal act for which it had no constitutional powers.

The "legal succession" was illegal. This will come as no surprise to any of our regular readers.

The cable portrays Roberto Micheletti, head of the congress, as actively pursuing the position of president through organizing votes and working for Zelaya's removal, rather than passively receiving the presidency by "legal" succession.

The cable portrays Ambassador Llorens in somewhat ambiguous relation to the unfolding pressures for a coup. In his dealings with the congress, he urges no "premature" action. That is somewhat less than arguing that they refrain from trying to remove the sitting president at all.

In his conversations with the head of the supreme court, he seems to be seeking to define a legal procedure for removing the president-- again, not precisely discouraging the effort to do so. And while we would not say he produced the rationale, what he reports on June 25 becomes the basis for those who claim the coup was legitimate: a case brought by the public prosecutor before the supreme court.

(We assume that the Ambassador understood that such a case would have had to be tried, not merely brought; on the Honduran side, for a complex series of reasons, simply bringing the charges seemed to be enough reason to consider the president impeached.)

Ambassador Llorens comes across as a confidante of those who become the authors of the coup d'etat.

An earlier cable from June 18, 2009 documents a breakfast meeting between Llorens and Generals Romeo Vasquez Velasquez and Miguel Garcia Padgett in which he told the Generals that "the heavens would fall" if the military made any unconstitutional move.

Of course, it didn't happen that way. The US was reluctant to cut off military aid after the coup, only taking that step months later.

Diplomacy is of course a difficult dance. Llorens does report talking to President Zelaya in his June 25 cable. But the tenor of his reported remarks there is much less pointed: he says he urged Zelaya to "to do everything he could to lower the tensions and send conciliatory public messages and engage in dialogue with the opposition". He reports urging Zelaya to remember that he is president of "all Hondurans".

Comparing the two sides of his diplomacy, it is clear that Ambassador Llorens wanted actions of a specific kind from President Zelaya; whereas he himself makes no reports of urging the Congress to engage in dialogue.

Is it any wonder why many Honduran intellectuals believe that the US was complicit in formulating the coup?

While former Minister of Culture Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle, in a recent interview, absolved the ambassador of direct responsibility, he concluded that the US

was, of course, directly involved. Of course, who—I’m not able to signal and say that Ambassador Llorens was directly involved in promoting the coup. Some people believe that. I know for a fact that CIA operatives and military personnel of the United States were in direct contact with the conspirators of the coup d’état and aided the conspirators of the coup d’état. The coup was not something improvised. It was something that was laboriously and in a very punctilious manner prepared in time, so that from January onwards, you have this media campaign. All national newspapers, all major television chains and stations are involved, in this long period, in a propaganda campaign against the government, Zelaya’s government.

This legacy of distrust is not going to disappear because Honduras was readmitted to the OAS. It has not been healed by the agreement that allowed Zelaya to return to the country without facing immediate imprisonment.

It will remain a lasting legacy of US diplomacy that, while attempting not to take sides in a Honduran dispute, managed to give the authors of the coup the impression that if they just did things with an appearance of legality, everything would be fine.

When the US actually reacted, initially denouncing the coup, and much later, imposing modest sanctions, the outrage expressed by the de facto regime and the Honduran Congress told one side of the story: these authors of the coup were not expecting to be punished.

Now we have a glimpse at the other side: the communications that gave these actors the impression that removing the sitting president would not be problematic, as long as it was done using the correct legal procedure, and as long as it did not lead to the imposition of a military junta-- even for the short six months of Zelaya's remaining term of office.

"They're making them in the laboratory...."

It would be funny if it weren't serious; General René Osorio, head of Honduras's Armed Forces, believes one needs a university laboratory to make Molotov cocktails, or so he says in Saturday's Tiempo

"they're making them [Molotov cocktails] in the laboratory of the Teaching University."

Rather than explain the simple components of a Molotov cocktail, something anyone can manufacture in seconds from simple household ingredients, without a university laboratory, I would recommend General Osorio learn what's involved in their fabrication; no laboratory needed.

Speaking of fabrications, the spectre of Nicaraguans invading to disrupt Honduran society has been raised again. First Oscar Alvarez, and now General Rene Osorio claim that foreigners are infiltrating the teacher's protests to cause chaos. Alvarez was specific; they're Nicaraguans. Just last December Alvarez announced that Nicaraguans were importing thousands of weapons and arming and training the FNRP in the Bajo Aguan. Although they announced several times they knew where the arms were (apparently in the local INA office, which they occupied for two months), no arms, or Nicaraguans, were ever found. Only the land titles which show INA owns some of the lands claimed by Miguel Facussé.

When an otherwise seemingly intelligent person, like General Osorio, makes a ridiculous claim in the press, one must look beyond the claim, to its implications, to understand why they might be asserting it. In this case General Osorio almost certainly knows better than to believe Molotov cocktails require a laboratory to manufacture. So what could actually be behind this profoundly outlandish statement? It is likely to be about creating an excuse to move troops and police onto the Teaching University campus. The police used an almost identical claim to justify moving troops and police onto the Autonomous University campus (an illegal act) during the de facto regime. It wasn't true that time, either.

Hey, it worked once....

Hugo Llorens (18 June 2009): There won't be a coup

The French paper Le Monde reports today on two US State Department cables from Hugo Llorens, US Ambassador to Honduras, to the State Department, one dated 18 June, 2009, and a follow-up dated 19 June 2009. (These cables are not yet up on any of the Wikileaks mirror sites, or Le Monde's cable browser.) For our non-French-speaking audience, here are highlights:

On June 18, 2009, just ten days before the coup, Hugo Llorens wrote that he did not believe in the rumors of a coup then circulating in Honduras (rumors we personally heard as well, from trusted colleagues):

"At present we do not believe that the military leaders have any intention of attacking the legitimate government"

Llorens concluded.

Llorens reported having breakfast with General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez and General Miguel Garcia Padgett and receiving their assurance that the military would not move against the government of Manuel Zelaya. They told Llorens they had spoken in private to politicians to put pressure on them.

Vasquez Velasquez told Llorens that the military was in an intolerable situation because they had been ordered to carry out a poll which was considered illegal by the Honduran judiciary and the election tribunal. He told Llorens that the military "will not do anything without the support of the American administration."

On June 19, Le Monde reported, the tone of Lloren's cables changed:

"Honduras rushes perhaps to a major political confrontation."

Llorens reported his aim to reason with Zelaya and bring him to a face-saving solution to the confrontation. He reported that the Embassy had

"no information suggesting that Zelaya or a member of his government intend to trample democracy and suspend constitutional guarantees. "

Llorens continued to

"believe that Honduran democratic institutions are strong enough to survive, even under stress. "

As Le Monde notes, nine days after the June 19 cable, the military, Congress, and Supreme Court staged the coup.

The jury is still out on whether there are democratic institutions in Honduras strong enough to survive the coup and its aftermath.

Honduran suspicions of US complicity in the coup (part two)

The second story posted today stemming from the interview with Roland Valenzuela, now circulating by email and on the internet, cites the mechanism by which Valenzuela said he gained access to papers from the planning of the coup:

The coup d'Etat was planned by Honduran businessmen in an Arab emirate

The assassinated ex minister, Roland Valenzuela, for the ousted president Manuel Zelaya, denounced, on "San Pedro Sula by Night", that the coup d'Etat in Honduras was planned by a group of six Honduran businessmen, who coincided in attending a fair in Dubai, one of the seven Arab emirates.

They met in a bar in a hotel and decided that they had to remove Zelaya: "we cannot bear him any more". Just when the Cuarta Urna started to be pushed, a menace to them, since Zelaya sought a constitutional assembly to convert into law the economic and social measures of his government, in order to protect them.

The "articulator", the coordinator of the coup d'Etat, Jackeline Sandoval, graduated with honors from West Point, and trained afterwards in the US Rangers, forgot a dossier of papers in the Hotel Plaza San Martin, that contained various drafts with precise details of how the Coup would occur.

The dossier was delivered, by "a common citizen who to me is a hero", said Valenzuela, in a recorded copy of the radio program, of almost two hours duration that is circulating on the Internet.

They paid four million dollars to a "powerful lobbyist", someone who promotes political proposals, last name Smith, to misinform about Zelaya through accusations to the Pentagon, the CIA, and the FBI, and to predispose the government of the US. Smith and partners contacted the coordinator of the coup.

Valenzuela commented that those groups, that had sworn an oath to kill Zelaya, would be listening and would say "how does this hayseed [hijuelmaíz] know so much, I don't know if they will kill me right now when I leave [the Radio]", he said, laughing.

The ambassador Hugo Llorens and the US

Among other papers, is the draft of the decree to remove Zelaya, with the number of the Act, dated the 28th of June 2009, signed by Ricardo Rodriguez, José Toribio Aguilera, Rolando Dubón Bueso, Rigoberto Chang Castillo and Gabo Alfredo Jalil Mejía; who address Hugo Llorens, telling him that some corrections are lacking but that "your opinion requires immediate attention".

"what does ambassador Llorens have to do meddling in those matters... giving opinions on a draft that is, nothing less, than the draft of the removal of President Zelaya. This love so great that Llorens had for Zelaya, after not liking him, always called my attention", Valenzuela opined.

He accused the US: "the coup was not reversed because, they betrayed us". Zelaya never was restored because the US assured Micheletti "hold on, hold on, stay there, because we are not going to remove you", he asserted.

"Hillary Clinton swore to Zelaya that they were going to restore him", but at the same time turned over control of the situation to Oscar Arias, who Valenzuela called "the clerk of the gringos".

There is also a communique of the international community, in which "they report that the rule of law was persistently broken" by Zelaya, that "he was attributed, de facto, the supremacy of all the powers of State".

He said that in the sheet, there was a "little list" of the people that were in the meeting, and a set of "untrue accusations" against Zelaya, with observations and corrections that were considered necessary for the proposed plan. Jackeline Sandoval delivered to each person involved which were their tasks and what they should do, or say.

"Call Marcia Villeda so that she obtains those documents" said one of the annotations read by Valenzuela. She "faked the signature" on a supposed resignation of Zelaya and afterwords "they declared her innocent" in a court, he explained.

When Zelaya decided to carry out the Cuarta Urna, the businessmen had a meeting in Dubai and discussed that he wanted the constitutional assembly to convert into law the discounts on fuels. For Valenzuela this had been the motive.

They convince the Armed Forces of Honduras

The conspirators went in search of the Armed Forces, which was the final shield of defense of President Zelaya, that had "remained loyal" to the president, he said.

Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who was at the time in the Hotel Christopher Columbus in Trujillo, "seemed like a child running from one side to the other showing the plans for the Cuarta Urna to the President", Valenzuela observed. "Suddently, he radically changed his position".

The golpistas acted divided

The only "lying excuse" that they had to kidnap the President was the Cuarta Urna. One golpista group said that there was no way "to touch the president, there are not processes yet, they haven't done what needs to be done, they haven't fulfilled the plan that we made, they are going to reverse the coup", they complained to the other group.

Micheletti persisted and "convinced the Armed Forces, with a perverse connection". Those involved "are the men that command in this country", Rafael Ferrari, media baron, "became ill and went to the US, but left instructions for Renato Alvarez and Edgardo Melgar [journalists] so that they would dedicate themselves to blowing up flowerpots at Mel, and follow the instructions of Billy Joya".

He said that "the golpistas did not follow the scheme that the hawks gave them, the procedure that the American ambassador accepted". Carlos Flores, also golpista, followed the proposal of the US, he was the first to show solidarity with president Zelaya and his wife Xiomara, and to say to him that he "had nothing to do with the coup".

According to Valenzuela those pressing for the coup were "a chuña faction, those that came from below and were desperate to divvy up power".

"The are going to have me killed for this", Roland Valenzuela then said.

He asserted that there is a group of hitman to assassinate Zelaya. That the order in the coup "was to kill him, pretend that the presidential guard resisted, that there was a shoot-out and a shot hit him. But, a man that was opposed" when the elite guard arrived to take away the president, sent 500 soldiers so that "600 eyes would see what happened".

Valenzuela mentioned, in the interview, that he did not go out to march with the Resistance, because he feared that they would kill him in the street, because it fell to him to do "private things, alone" to push for the return and the restitution of Zalaya.

With the Constituyente, Zelaya sought to convert into law the social conquests pushed ahead

Valenzuela mentioned seven measures of the government of Zelaya that produced the discontent and caused the various powerful groups to unite against him.

Among others, the order to lower the prices of the basic shopping cart, the regulation and pressures by the DEI [income tax agency] for the dispensations to fast food franchises, that introduced products like a consumer shop, and sold them in other places.

The measures to adjust the price of fuels, Petro Caribe that provoked the revolt of the transnationals. He told that one of the importers said to the president: "if I stop importation of fuels, president, you will not last even 24 hours more in your position". Valenzuela said that he pushed that businessman, and insulted them.

Zelaya had concluded that the measures achieved in his government could only be protected by "turning them into law", and for that the constitutional assembly was needed, that led him to push for a popular poll, known as the Cuarta Urna. Because, as he said, "in the Congress we have no power. The Court, the Tribunal Superior de Cuentas, 'are owned"".

The role of the Commission of Truth and reconciliation

The "commission of the lie" intends to say that "they committed the coup against president Zelaya because he provoked it", Valenzuela concluded.

Roland Valenzuela, close collaborator and friend of Zelaya, was assassinated by a bullet in the back, by another businessman, Carlos Yacamán Meza, in the bar of a hotel, the 16th of [June] or 2010. The Police initially hid the name of the person that killed him in order not to "hinder the investigations".

And The Coup Goes On.....

Romeo Vasquez Velasquez was fired from his job as commander of the Honduran Armed Forces by President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, reportedly because of international pressure. He formally left the position on February 26, officially retiring from the Armed Forces. How strange, then, to see him reinstalled in the government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa as the new head of HONDUTEL, the troubled national phone company, less than two weeks later.

Vasquez Velasquez wasted no time in thanking Lobo for the appointment and immediately announcing the appointment of Jesús Arturo Mejia, a former employee of the Public Prosecutor, Luis Rubi, and a supporter of Ricardo Alvarez, the head of the Nationalist Party and Mayor of Tegucigalpa, who is already running for President, to be the head of the HONDUTEL computer services division. Vasquez Velasquez noted that as a military officer, he had lots of experience in administration, and that when he was head of the Institute of Miltary Planning (IPM in Spanish), the military prospered.

Myrna Castro, the "fashion is culture" de facto Minister of Culture has been given an appointment in the High Court of Auditors (TSC in Spanish), the very organization that will investigate the disappearance of 157 million lempiras in funding during her tenure in Culture.

Arturo Corrales, one of Micheletti's negotiators for the Tegucigalpa San Jose Accord, is Porfirio Lobo Sosa's Minister of Planning and International Cooperation. As such, he is in charge of the process by which the National Plan, Lobo Sosa's 28 year economic and social development plan for Honduras, is formulated.

Vilma Morales, another of Micheletti's negotiators, was appointed the head of the Banking and Insurance commission (CNBS in Spanish).

Clearly there either isn't enough international pressure, or that isn't the reason Romeo Vasquez Velasquez was replaced. The golpistas continue to find prominant places in Porfirio Lobo Sosa's government.

Romeo Good Night

General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez is out as commander of the armed forces of Honduras. This afternoon, President Porfirio Lobo Sosa swore in the former Inspector General of the Armed Forces, General Carlos Antonio Cuéllar Castillo, as head of the armed forces of Honduras.

General Vasquez Velasquez was not due to be replaced in this position until next December, but international pressure is cited in the Tiempo story as the reason for his removal now. The story says that the international community does not want anyone linked with the coup in Lobo Sosa's government.

Lobo Sosa explained that Cuéllar would serve in this position until he was due to retire, in 2013. Cuéllar, La Prensa reported, will make recommendations to Lobo Sosa about the 5 officials who should head each of the branches of the armed forces and form his equivalent of the Joint Chiefs.

General Carlos Cuéllar was one of the Generals charged by the Honduran Public Prosecutor with exiling President Manuel Zelaya Rosales on June 28, so its hard to see how moving from one golpista General to another is actually a response to international pressure to not have anyone associated with the coup as part of the Lobo Sosa government, but maybe its the degree to which Romeo Vasquez Velasquez is linked to the coup that necessitated his removal. In any case, this is not a radical change.

Why change your defense when it is working so well?

Tonight, the AP reports that Porfirio Lobo Sosa has made his decision about the leadership of the Armed Forces.

And surprise! he is keeping the 2009 team that was so successful in committing the coup d'etat, and then serving the de facto regime.

As Col. Ramiro Archaga told the press after a three hour meeting with Lobo Sosa,

The president told us he is no hurry to make changes to the military leadership, that he will do that when he thinks it's convenient...That means there will be no changes for now.

Coverage by the pro-coup La Prensa is more colorful than the AP story. It quotes the Armed Forces spokesman as saying Lobo Sosa met over lunch with the high command and Defense Minister

to reiterate to the Armed Forces his backing in the programs to combat criminality and in assistance to the communities of the country, principally those affected by the drought.

Lobo Sosa is quoted as asking that the Armed Forces "get close to the people". To help in that task, the Armed Forces are reportedly going to be given part of the goods seized from drug traffickers and other members of organized crime.

Not that Lobo Sosa's announcement was a ringing endorsement of General Vasquez Velasquez personally. Having previously given murky statements to the effect that there was precedent for removing a chief of the command, what Lobo Sosa is said to have indicated is

for the moment [Vasquez Velasquez] continues being the chief of the High Command... until the President names the substitute that he feels is convenient.

General Romeo, the spokesperson pointed out, was originally named to serve through the end of this year. So apparently he will have time to pack his things. And meanwhile, he and his comrades in arms are satisfied, they say, that Lobo Sosa is in the "best position to aid the Armed Forces so that [they] can move ahead".

And in case the message is not clear, recall that Lobo Sosa continues to have Adolfo Sevilla, appointed by Roberto Micheletti, as his Defense Minister. This has its awkward moments: the government of Spain, for example, refuses to let anyone who served in the coup regime government enter the country, explicitly including Sevilla, who bears direct responsibility for the actions of the Armed Forces in repressing dissent after the coup d'etat.

But Lobo Sosa can count on the same fine team that helped implement the defense policies of the Micheletti regime. And why would he not want that?