Close embassies? Who said anything about closing embassies?

Remember that announcement, covered in our previous post, about Honduras closing its embassies in UNASUR countries? Porfirio Lobo Sosa has overruled Mario Canahuati's announcement that Honduras was going to close embassies in some UNASUR nations, calling it a misunderstanding.

"At no time has the government of the Republic headed by president Porfirio Lobo Sosa been disposed to close embassies in South American countries,"

said a press release from the executive branch in Honduras.

Mario Canahauti, the foreign minister, made that announcement just before leaving the country.

This is not the first time Canahauti has floated this suggestion. In the past, the executive branch has remained silent when he's suggested it.

The idea to close the embassies originates with the ultra-right in Honduras and forms part of the tension between the ultra right in Lobo Sosa's government, and the slightly more centrist parts. Lobo Sosa, coming off a National Party convention which overwhelmingly supported his policies, had the strength, this time, to reply.

Lobo Sosa made clear his rejection of this position yesterday when, through a spokesperson, he said that his goal was

"to establish diplomatic and commercial relations with all the countries of the world,"

according to the press release from the executive branch.

The release goes on to state that Canahauti was really announcing that they were evaluating the desirability of maintaining concurrent diplomatic and commercial missions in any part of the world.

Untangling that, what Lobo Sosa means is embassies in one country might serve several countries.

It's very clear that there was no press misunderstanding of what Canahuati actually said, which is how Lobo Sosa tried to save face.

Both international (EFE) and national reports had the same story after Canahauti's announcement. Neither the executive branch, nor the foreign ministry, made any attempt to clarify, EFE notes, despite widespread coverage in the national and international press after the announcement. Canahuati's vice-ministers gave interviews about it in the national press.

It took an entire day for the executive branch to disown the story, and for Canahauti's ministry to issue a statement claiming he was misunderstood.

But this seems to be less a case of misunderstanding than of different policy directions. And in this round, at any rate, Lobo Sosa seems to have put his foot down.

Who Needs Brazil? On to Asia...

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oh, Canada.

Bad Journalism

Proceso Digital is a fairly new Honduran digital newspaper, formed by two professional journalists, Marlen Perdomo de Zelaya and Orfa Sofia Mejia Maradiaga.

Perdomo has a professional degree from UNAH in journalism, and teaches journalism at UNAH. She is also a member of the advisory council of UNAH. Mejia Maradiaga is an investigative reporter, also with a professional degree in journalism from UNAH. She has worked for a number of radio stations and newspapers in Honduras, including Radio Cadena de Noticias and La Prensa. She has also worked for EFE and Reuters, and the digital magazine Revistazo.

In a recent interview in El Heraldo Mejia Maradiaga described journalism as playing a role in the development of society and the strengthening of democracy:

"Objectivity, they say in the classrooms of the university, is the goal (ideal). It is not easy, but it is possible. Obviously you will never please both sides. What we have to try to do is keep as much as possible to the truth, to be as responsible as possible in the treatment of information. We should not think that our truth is the truth which we should impose on our public."

Proceso Digital sometimes comes close to the above journalistic standard, but more often than not fails to distinguish between claims of fact, facts, and opinion.

Their article today about Porfirio Lobo Sosa's impending trip to Spain is a perfect example of when they fail, and is suggestive about what is wrong with Honduran journalism in general. The problems begin with the headline:

Lobo Sosa will go to Spain and make the boycott by "Twenty-First Century Socialism" fail

Already we're in trouble.

As our previous post on the Naumann Foundation showed, the phrase "twenty-first century socialism" is not a fact; it is editorializing. It has no business being in the article or headline except as part of a quotation. But it isn't taken from a quotation; it is inserted by the journalists.

Lobo Sosa will travel to Spain tomorrow, missing the EU-Latin American summit, which is attended by representatives of those countries that threatened to boycott if Lobo Sosa were present. In other words: Lobo Sosa is not there today; he is not at the EU-Latin American summit; and in fact, that means the UNASUR countries got what they demanded.

Lets look at some more of this "news article", datelined Tegucigalpa:

Twenty-First Century socialism failed in its boycott of Honduras, whose representatives will attend the Third Summit of the European Union and Latin America, with which the country has broken the diplomatic siege that some South American governments and their partners in the region still insist on making.

Fact Check: Lets see, the boycott failed because some representatives of Honduras, but not Porfirio Lobo Sosa, will attend the back room meetings, not the meetings of heads of state, at the Third European Union - Latin American summit?

Umm, no, the boycott threatened was by heads of state against Porfirio Lobo Sosa attending the meeting of heads of state. Redefining what the boycott was about is just making things up.

Not very objective journalism, but certainly within the realm of what rags like La Prensa and El Heraldo print every day as news.

Proceso Digital continues:

President Porfirio Lobo Sosa, the representative of Honduras, will travel to Spain to attend the summit, which is on the brink of failure because of the impossibility and the limited political clout of Spain to get other governments in tune to achieve the objectives of the meeting.

Fact Check: Better. Porfirio Lobo Sosa will travel to Spain to attend the EU-Central American summit, a subset of the larger EU-Latin American summit. The Central American meetings will happen the day after the Latin America-wide meeting.

Some European news sources, including the BBC, have said the purpose of the meeting is unclear since both sides are divided about how to deal with each other and Europe is distracted by a financial crisis. There are economic trade agreements being negotiated frantically that Spain would like to see signed at the summits, one with the MERCOSUR countries in South America, and a separate agreement with Central America, including Honduras.

The goal of the Madrid EU-Latin American and Caribbean Summit is to get two documents signed. One is a declaration of political alliances between the regions, including themes like technology transfer, the other is a joint action plan. A strategic alliance declaration may well fail.

Returning to Proceso Digital:

Lobo Sosa will participate in the meeting between the EU-Central America, where the main goal is the signing of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement, with its free trade component.

Fact Check: Good. This sentence communicates both where Lobo Sosa will go, what meeting he will attend, and why he's going. Note that the UNASUR countries would never have been at this meeting, so the boycott is irrelevant.

In addition, the summit will serve to allow Lobo Sosa to keep bilateral meetings with several leaders and figures of Latin American and Spanish politics.

In addition to meeting with the Spanish authorities who bowed to the boycott of the governments of the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA), Lobo Sosa will meet with the head of the [Spanish] Popular Party, Mariano Rajoy.

Fact Check: The first sentence is good, emphasizing Lobo Sosa's prominence on the world stage. The second sentence, however, goes off the rails yet again. It was the UNASUR countries that threatened a boycott, not the ALBA countries. They are distinct, separate groups, even if some of their membership overlaps. You need to keep them straight if you claim to provide reliable information.

Many of the Honduran newspapers have written that it is Hugo Chavez, not the presidents of Brazil and Argentina, who is behind the boycott, continuing a pattern of demonizing international pressure on Honduras by associating it with Venezuela. So perhaps the author of the Proceso Digital article is just confused because they've been reading the "journalists" Mejia Maradiaga and Perdomo trained in the university, instead of checking the facts of this story.

Lobo Sosa will, indeed, meet with the Popular Party (PP) head, Mariano Rajoy on his trip to Spain. That is not a surprise: the PP supported the coup, as did Lobo Sosa.

Again, returning to Proceso Digital:

In vain did the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero accede to the blackmail of Chavez, as the Venezuelan president finally decided to punish the Spanish and will not attend the event and sending a person without weight, Deputy Foreign Minister Francisco Cardenas Arias.

It is also likely that the Brazilian President, Lula da Silva, the other agent who announced the boycott, will not attend.

Nor will with Uruguayan President Mujica attend.

In fact, Brazilian President Lula da Silva announced yesterday that he would attend the meetings, so this speculation is factually wrong, and that fact was knowable before the article was posted on the website. Mujica will not attend because of health concerns. The stress of being President of Uruguay has badly affected his health, according to local news sources. These are not responses to Spain's actions nor do they diminish the success of the UNASUR action.

It is likely that in Madrid, if a new obstacle doesn't force Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua to not attend the meeting, that there will be concretized a meeting of the six Central American leaders.

In fact, Ortega may or may not attend since he was listed as "iffy" about the economic agreement. He did not threaten a boycott if Lobo Sosa attended, but Nicaragua has not recognized the Lobo government either.

The above was stated by the president of Guatemala, Alvaro Colom, who noted that Madrid is propitious for the desired meeting where the return of Honduras Central American Integration System (SICA) will be defined.

If the reunion of SICA happens, and the Association agreement with the European Union is also signed, Lobo Sosa's trip will have been a diplomatic triumph.

Yes, Colom noted that he's trying to get the Central American presidents together in Madrid to discuss readmitting Honduras into SICA, and that Daniel Ortega might balk at getting everyone together. Getting readmitted to SICA is important for Honduras because symbolically it means Central America has forgiven the coup. It is the precursor to being readmitted to the OAS as well. Economically, Honduras is already participating in SICA, however, so its impact there will be non-existent.

Will it be a diplomatic triumph for which Lobo Sosa can take credit? I'm sure he will, if it happens. Not impossible that it will happen. But it will be Colom's "diplomatic triumph" if so, and a "triumph" of questionable value.

But Lobo Sosa also expects the offensive of the international left, which previously was in charge of the radical groups, unions and NGOs who fought several months for the Spanish government to withdraw the invitation to the Honduran president.

The groups said they had meetings and marches to censure the presence of Lobo Sosa.

The international groups will be supported by Hondurans, followers of the "melista" movement, that supported the ex-leader and employee of Hugo Chávez, Manuel Zelaya, when he was removed from power on June 28, 2009.

Several figures of the Honduran left went to Spain to make complaints and participate in the so-called People's Summit, which brings together all opposition to government figures.

Fact Check: Got a source for that? No one else is saying there will be protests against Lobo Sosa by anyone other than heads of state (remember the boycott?), so I'd really like to know where you got that information, or did you make that up?

And what about the characterization of former President Zelaya as an "employee of Chavez", which we presume is meant to smear supporters of Zelaya in his role as President of Honduras, by blurring the lines between a recent proposal to appoint Zelaya to a ceremonial position with Petrocaribe, and his role during his truncated term of office in Honduras. This is not a fact, it is a sneer.

This has been a fairly long exercise but if you stuck with me you have a fair idea of what passes for professional journalism in Honduras, written, we have to assume, since they are the only names on the website, by Marlen Perdomo de Zelaya or Orfa Sofia Mejia Maradiaga, or both. Certainly it falls far short of what Ms. Mejia cited above as the goal of good journalism. You can, and should do better, Proceso Digital.

Zelaya to Correa: Proposal for a Route to Reconciliation

In a letter dated May 9 directed to Ecuador's President, Rafael Correa, former Honduran President José Manuel Zelaya Rosales took a step forward as an agent in the ongoing process of working out a way forward for Honduras.

Zelaya occupies a critical but ambiguous position in Honduran political struggle after the inauguration of Porfirio Lobo Sosa. Many members of the opposition were and continue to be inspired by the unprecedented number of steps taken to improve conditions for all Honduras by Zelaya's administration.

Yet the Frente de Resistencia cannot afford to be identified as solely supporters of Zelaya, a depiction used to dismiss their current political aims. Nor is that an accurate characterization of its membership, which includes skeptics about all traditional Honduran politics.

It is impossible even for skeptics to ignore the symbolic value Zelaya has achieved by virtue of having been forcibly expatriated in reaction to steps he had taken to challenge the system that benefits only a small proportion of Hondurans.

Zelaya cannot be ignored; but it has been unclear how he could build on the symbolic position he holds, and in particular, do so in a way that would be productive for the entire Honduran opposition.

With this letter, Zelaya has made his move to try to mobilize his symbolic stature and political experience to push for a voice for the victims of the coup in the face of the Truth Commission, whose legitimacy he challenges centrally.

Sr. President Rafael Correa: I address you with the goal that you will know the agenda that I have proposed for national reconciliation of the Honduran people and to contribute an acceptable peaceful solution for the people to the effect that it would include the recognition of Honduras in the international community.

I present you for your information the following proposal:

PROPOSAL FOR A POLITICAL AGREEMENT FOR THE RE-ESTABLISHMENT OF DEMOCRACY AND NATIONAL RECONCILIATION IN HONDURAS

From an obligatory exile originated by the military coup d'Etat of the past 28th of June, that today is prolonged through the judicial persecution set loose against me for political purposes, added to the violations of human rights against the people, and considering the coherent and solidary position of UNASUR in defense of the Honduran people, I present to you a proposal that would permit the return of the Honduran state to the bosom of the international community and the national reconciliation of the Honduran people.

Allow us to highlight the following facts:

• The Supreme Court of Justice absolved, with a final dismissal of charges, the military command, executor of the coup d'Etat and responsible for crimes against humanity

• The National Congress decree an amnesty solely applicable to the authors of the coup d'Etat, leaving with impunity the most abominable crimes and violations of human rights committed against a defenseless population.

• The Attorney General and the Supreme Court of Justice, co-authors of the coup d'Etat, executing actions of judicial persecution with political purposes against President Zelaya and his ministers, remain in their positions and enjoying impunity.

• No organization, nor system of the international community, not the UN, nor the OAS, nor the Sistema de Integración Centroamericana (SICA), the Rio Group, among others, has repealed its resolutions and sanctions against the coup d'Etat since the circumstances that originated this deed, that has menaced our democracies, have not been overcome.

• The "Truth Commission" has been put together in a unilateral manner and without consultation on the part of the government excluding us totally from the entire process, in a misunderstanding that we victims do not have the right to a voice nor representation. This puts us in position of helplessness in the face of the impunity of the executors of the military coup d'Etat.

It is due to the preceding that, very conscious of the position of the UNASUR group and of Ecuador, that occupies the Presidency pro tem, I pose for you the possibility of a political agreement to resolve the crisis derived from the military coup d'Etat, that might contemplate at least the following elements.

1. That the National Congress of Honduras should decree an amnesty, full and sufficient for the via judicial filed by the officials who together with the dictator Micheletti acted in the coup d'Etat and that today are found directing with impunity the institutions administering justice, venting their wrath against ex-President Zelaya and high officials of his government.

This agreement would guarantee the return to the country of ex-President Zelaya and others who today are found in exile, in the full enjoyment of their civil and political rights, a petition supported by the people and the Frente de Resistencia Popular for national reconciliation.

2. That there be given guarantees for the exercise of DEMOCRATIC LIBERTY in the country, that would permit there to be debate and to decide about the necessity for the establishment of participatory democracy and the right that society in Resistance against the coup d'Etat has to state an opinion, to have recognition as a belligerent force, and to demand a new Constitution.

3. To guarantee the end of repression and respect for human rights of all the citizenry, men and women, putting an end to crime, assassination, judicial persecution and repression on the part of the dependencies of the Police and Armed Forces.

4. To remove from their positions the principal people responsible for the civil-military coup d'Etat, that are found occupying the operative organizations of justice and ministerial positions.

5. That the integration of the citizen José Manuel Zelaya Rosales in the Central American parliament should proceed, a position that corresponds to him following his constitutional investiture and by his own right.

6. That an end be put to impunity for violations of human rights and that there be presented to the International Criminal Court the authors of the crimes against humanity that are already sued for those offences and that refused to appear in court. For example: the Attorney General refuses to proceed and to present himself to the international courts although knowing that Honduras is part of the International Criminal Court, and that the suits have been accepted by the CIDH and by the same Criminal Court.

I reaffirm to the government of Ecuador and to UNASUR our disposition to promote this political accord in SICA, CARICOM, the Rio Group, and ALBA, so that in the bosom of the next Assembly of the OAS this plan would be accepted and supported and that Honduras would obtain international recognition, and we all could commit ourselves to this agenda, prior to the development expected for such a great event.