Lobo: Honduras Wants Change

Porfirio Lobo Sosa will start his dialogue with the organized social and political organizations this coming Saturday.

Already he's saying that the results of that dialogue need to be proposed as constitutional changes before the end of this year, because changes proposed in 2012 would require approval by whoever wins the 2013 elections.

Speaking to his Cabinet, he said

"There are those who don't want us to listen to the people, being mixed up; leave them behind; they're not important; I tell those of you who have confidence in me that no one will remove me from my path, no one. Why? because, just as some of you don't like to read much, some, but I read every day: the doctrine of christian socialism; that's where I am placed and no one will remove me unless they do something (he laughs) which violates the norms."

Lobo announced that each session of his dialogue will last three or four hours and participants will be encouraged to present their vision of necessary changes: not just political, but economic and social as well.

"There go those crickets who go, the assembly which Pepe Lobo is talking about is the Constituyente. I have not said a Constituyente. I have said that we cannot sit waiting for a Constituyente, if a Constituyente comes, or does not come, I have the responsibility to make changes because Honduras wants change."

Lobo Sosa's consultations do not depend on the much-touted law that was supposed to enable plebiscites and referenda, because that law is gathering dust in Congress.

The law was passed by two-thirds of Congress, but the actual operationalization, drafted in committee, sits in a drawer somewhere.

As drafted in committee, the law actually makes it almost impossible to hold a referendum, requiring signatures of at least 2 percent of the registered electorate, plus the support of ten congress persons and a Presidential resolution, in order to get considered by the Congress.

Then, and only then, Congress has to discuss the issue and vote to move it forward or not, and determine the language used in the referendum before handing it off to the Election Tribunal.

Any referendum approved following this process will pass if it receives the support of 51 percent of an electorate equal in size to that which voted in the last general election.

These are high barriers that predictably will have the result of preventing anything controversial from being considered by the voting public.

As El Heraldo noted, every proposal has to pass through Congress, where members can halt anything that damages their interests.

Pepe Lobo may be right about Honduras wanting change.

But the law that is supposed to make that possible shows that Congress clearly does not.

(Not) Talking Constituyente

The AFP, in an article entitled "President of Honduras to convoke dialogue on a National Constituent Assembly", reported today that Porfirio Lobo Sosa will begin on July 9 a series of dialogues across the country to talk with various sectors about constitutional reform.

The AFP's headline is somewhat misleading: Lobo Sosa will not be calling for a Constituyente.

What he says he will do is quite a bit different:

"After they tell us the reforms, we will translate them into proposals for the National Congress to do what is normal in Congress, to analyze, discuss, generate consensus, and reform laws or approve new laws....I will advance the discussion of reforms because we can't sit around waiting for a Constituyente to be approved."

So pretty clearly, no Constituyente; no popular debate about fundamental reorientation of the political system and codification of rights of women and minorities; just constitutional reform as business-as-usual, perpetuating existing power relations.

That doesn't merit the headline of the AFP, or the promotion the same misinformation is getting now in venues like the AP.

Lobo Sosa won't be proposing anything himself; he'll just be listening.

Historically, Lobo Sosa has used dialogues like this to cull ideas for legislation, meeting with the obvious interest groups to which he and the National Party are oriented, not, for example, the FNRP or campesino groups.

The groups presenting ideas in the present dialogues will come from recognized sectors of society (e.g. business associations, the churches, the UCD, the political parties), each in its own separate dialogue with Lobo Sosa.

The participants will be limited to invited interest groups, and if you don't fall into one of those groups you will be voiceless in this process.

So, the key will be seeing who is invited to talk to Lobo Sosa. Will the FNRP get a hearing? How on earth could Lobo Sosa think he can accommodate what the Frente is calling for within the existing government processes?

A Tale of Two Environments

Just about a week ago we wrote about the return of the Rio Platano Biosphere Reserve to the UNESCO World Heritage in Danger list.

"Proposed dam construction on the Rio Patuca river", described as a current threat in the UNESCO press release, doesn't come from some alien force: it is a project of the current Honduran administration, acting against the protests of the indigenous peoples of eastern Honduras, who have not been consulted as they should have been under the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ILO 169, both international agreements signed by previous Honduran governments.

As we predicted, there has been little English language coverage of this threat, and what there has been focused on illegal logging and drug trafficking, the issues that the Honduran government prefers to emphasize.

Contrast the lack of analysis of threats to the Rio Platano Biosphere with coverage of the Honduran government's well-timed PR release about new protection of sharks in its waters, sent out two days after the UNESCO action, with the blessing of the Pew Environmental Trust.

No less a venue than the New York Times (albeit in a blog) covered this announcement, and other English language coverage has begun to follow, all faithfully following the lines of the original press release, congratulating Porfirio Lobo Sosa personally for leadership on shark preservation.

Predictably, no mainstream media are taking a critical look at the overall policies of the Honduran government with respect to environmental issues.

The CIA World Factbook, a fairly sober source, summarized current environmental issues in Honduras in 2010 succinctly:

urban population expanding; deforestation results from logging and the clearing of land for agricultural purposes; further land degradation and soil erosion hastened by uncontrolled development and improper land use practices such as farming of marginal lands; mining activities polluting Lago de Yojoa (the country's largest source of fresh water), as well as several rivers and streams, with heavy metals.

In the aftermath of the coup of 2009, we documented an acceleration in processing of petitions for environmental licenses by SERNA, the Secretariat of Natural Resources and Climate. By September 2009, SERNA had authorized 320 projects, valued at $368 million, for piers for cruise ships to dock on the Bay Islands, housing, pharmaceutical companies, chemical companies, hotels, and restaurants.

Under the Micheletti regime and the successor Lobo Sosa government Honduras has seen renewed advocacy for continued mining concessions. For years, people in the communities affected by mining, assisted by international NGOs, have fought government mining concessions that have caused environmental damage and health threats.

What is at stake in the Rio Patuca is well understood in Honduras, if not elsewhere.

An article in the June 26 edition of La Tribuna helps explain why the indigenous people of the Rio Platano Biosphere-- who are not intruders, but are supposed to be beneficiaries of its designation as UNESCO World Heritage-- are opposed to the Patuca dam projects. This article describes the Rio Patuca as comprising part of

the hydrological basins of the Patuca and Coco or Segovia rivers, which are a fundamental part of the hydrological balance at a national level and especially for the residents located within the park, since it is thanks to those rivers where the sources of water originate that provide them this liquid, they use them as a means of transport, for obtaining water for the irrigation of their subsistence fields and for the development of their productive activities.

The Patuca river has a great force for what was visualized many years ago as the construction of hydroelectric dams on it. Currently there is beginning the construction of the Patuca Dam III, which is not located within the protected area but is upriver so that the positive and negative impacts will affect this National Park.

These carefully worded paragraphs, while suggesting that any "negative" impacts will be balanced by positive ones (presumably, not including wiring the indigenous settlements in the reserve, and so somewhat difficult to imagine), are still better reporting on the danger posed to the Rio Platano biosphere than anything that has appeared in mainstream English language press.

The "pobladores" (residents) mentioned are members of specific indigenous groups, and they have made their objections known eloquently, as a plethora of activist websites document. Cultural Survival, to take just one example, states that

Dams would obstruct commerce and trade for thousands of people. On stretches of river between the dams, the flows, currents, and channels would be altered; people whose knowledge of the Patuca has sustained them for centuries would no longer master the river. Fish would disappear. Flood cycles that regularly wash nutrients over their agricultural lands would be changed. And road construction would open their forests to an unstoppable invasion of loggers, poachers, ranchers, and drug smugglers. The government plans to build a military base to protect the construction project. “These impacts will be fatal for the survival of the Tawahka as a unique people,” says their elected leader, Lorenzo Tinglas.

Cultural Survival gives more detail on precisely how the forest will be changed by the proposed dams, despite their location outside the boundaries of the reserve:

In the river, fish species that migrate upstream from the ocean during part of their life cycle would be blocked by the dams, threatening local extinctions. Downstream from the dam, the river’s volume, flow, and temperature would change, altering the habitats of shellfish, reptiles, amphibians, plants, and bird species. Upstream, the reservoirs would submerge rainforest vegetation, soils, and organic matter, which would emit greenhouse gases as they rot.

What makes the contrast in environmental approaches to the shark reserve and the Patuca dam intelligible as policies of one and the same government?

Understanding that in the end, the current Honduran administration is motivated by business.

In the Caribbean, preserving sharks will help preserve and increase tourism. The Rio Platano Biosphere might well face a future of increased tourism, if current plans for new airports continue, but for the moment, wild rivers in Honduras are economically most beneficial if they are dammed for hydroelectric generation.

New Political Party for 2013

Sunday the Frente Nacional de Resistencia Popular (FNRP)in Honduras voted to form a political party, called the Frente Amplio de Resistencia Popular (FARP) to participate in the 2013 elections. The party will be completely separate from the FNRP, which will remain a force for social change within the country.

Manuel Zelaya Rosales told the press that this new party will not seek to become a party by Congressional decree, but rather will go through the process of collecting signatures and becoming authorized in the usual way with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

One interesting quote from Zelaya suggests that membership in the new party will be by voluntary association, and that members will not be asked to abandoned their current party affiliations. How exactly that will work for things like internal elections was not made clear.

Candidates will be nominated by local assemblies, then elected by internal elections in FARP to run in the general elections.

This separation of the FNRP from the FARP would seem to resolve the essential tension between those in the Frente that want to become a political party, and those who want it to remain focused on social reforms. The press reported this was a consensus decision on the part of the delegates to the meeting.

The next step will be to hold another extraordinary session to define the party's governing rules and charter, and to collect around 47,000 signatures to register as a political party with the Supreme Electoral Tribunal.

Powerless

The Minister of Human Rights and Justice, Ana Pineda, recommended against changing the Honduran constitution to allow detention of possible criminals for 72 hours rather than the 24 hours the constitution currently allows. This is the period of time Police can hold a suspect without bringing them before a judge. Pineda said the reforms

"contravene and consequently regress the enjoyment of rights and fundamental liberties of the Honduran population."

She notes that the proposal does not advance Honduras with respect to Honduran human rights, but rather is a backward step.

One hundred and twenty eight Congress members heard her arguments, then 108 of them, as Proceso Digital put it, "ignored it" and voted to approve the constitutional change, allowing 48 hours detention before being presented before a judge, and adds a new ruling a judge can issue that orders you held if there exists evidence you are the author or accomplice in a crime.

As we've noted since the appointment of this new cabinet position, the proof of its value is in the actions it can take, not the words that it says. Apparently she is powerless to affect the national discourse on human rights, which by her own admission, with this change, took a step backwards.

What can she do?

UNESCO World Heritage Endangered For Profit

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee has added the Rio Platano Biosphere in Honduras back onto its list of "World Heritage in Danger".

Rio Platano had only come off the list in 2007, after being listed as in danger from 1996 on.

Coverage of the action taken cited "lack of law enforcement" allowing a host of dangers to the biosphere:

illegal settlement by squatters, illegal commercial fishing, illegal logging, poaching and a proposed dam construction on the Patuca River...

Notice anything in that list that seems different? the first four are all things that are against Honduran law, but are happening anyway (settlement, commercial fishing, logging, and hunting).

But the final danger listed is different: it is actually a project being promoted legally.

While UNESCO applauded the Honduran government for asking that the biosphere be put back on the danger list, it would seem someone in that very government might have some influence on the threat coming from the proposal to construct dams on the Patuca River.

The environmental NGO International Rivers describes this threat simply and clearly:

On 17 January 2011, the Honduran National Congress approved a decree for the construction of the Patuca II, IIA, and III dams on the Patuca River... The proposed development involves flooding 42 km of intact rain forest, all of which was on the legislative track to either become part of the Patuca National Park or the Tawahka Asangni Biosphere Reserve.

Note the wording here. The threatened land was on the legislative track for protection. This is what activists mean when they point out that environmental conditions have deteriorated since the coup of 2009. Business interests rule, and dams and power generation outweigh other interests.

Among those other interests: indigenous peoples.

For more than a decade, the Indigenous peoples of the Tawahka, Pech, Miskito, and Garifuna tribes have steadfastly opposed dam construction on the Patuca River, and they continue to do so, fearing the impacts to their survival and to the river ecosystem within the Río Plátano Biosphere Reserve.

International Rivers notes that this represents a failure of the Honduran Government to comply with the UN Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and ILO 169.

As proponents of a constitutional assembly from within indigenous groups have noted, one of their goals is to ensure that the Honduran Constitution will recognize the rights enshrined in the international agreements that it is supposed to be following.

In a particularly feverish endorsement of the project, earlier this week Israel Turcios Rodriguez published an editorial opinion in La Tribuna lauding Porfirio Lobo Sosa for his visionary leadership in inaugurating the project, financed by the International Development Bank and to be carried out by a Chinese company.

Turcios Rodriguez, remarkably, says nothing explicit about the objections of the indigenous peoples who are united against the Patuca dam projects, unless they are the subject of this somewhat less than clear sentence:

Doubtless, in these cases some few citizens will come out damaged, but others in the majority will come out highly benefited.

This is precisely the kind of logic that makes constitutional protections for the rights of endangered minorities so necessary. Pity that it is only the danger to the landscape that has any likelihood of coverage in the English language press.

And for the press, unfortunately, the UNESCO Committee offers a glittery distraction from the real, human-made, avoidable threat to both the livelihood of indigenous people and the continued existence of a viable biosphere: "the presence of drug traffickers", mentioned in comments after the committee decision. But it is not drug traffickers financing, building, or profiting from the Patuca dam project.

Blatant Judicial Misconduct

It is distinctly discouraging to read that another Honduran judge has acted in ways that are, to put it mildly, at odds with Honduran law.

But perhaps not surprising considering that the accused in the case is a former Zelaya administration official, who, despite Porfirio Lobo Sosa's guarantees, are apparently not going to be given due process and protected from legal harassment.

The Code of Criminal Procedure in Honduras states in Article 140 that courts have to provide copies of rulings to interested parties:

A Judge arranges for the conservation of the authentic copy (original) of acts, interlocutorial orders, and final sentences and any other act that they consider pertinent....The Secretary orders the preparation of copies, reports, or certifications, when they are requested by a public authority or by people with an accredited legitimate interest in obtaining them...."

A certified copy of a legal decision is necessary to prepare an appeal, because the written decision must contain the legal justification for the order.

Article 143 says:

Rulings and edicts will be issued automatically and without delay....In oral hearings, the resolution will be dictated immediately after the termination of them.

The parties to the criminal case then have 3 days to challenge that order, correct factual mistakes, and so forth (Article 143).

In the case against Enrique Flores Lanza, Judge Claudio Aguilar refused Friday to provide an authentic copy of his ruling specifying house arrest and ordering Flores Lanza within 30 days to pay 27 million lempiras (which itself is legally questionable, since the amount is supposed to be set with consideration of the person's financial abilities) or be sent to the National Penitentiary for holding until trial.

That is a violation of the Honduran Code of Criminal Procedure. It is judicial abuse of authority, as Raúl Suazo, Flores Lanza's lawyer, asserted. Any appeal of Judge Aguilar's order must be filed by Monday and needs to address the legal arguments Judge Aguilar used to support the decision.

Judge Aguilar's odd behavior led Raúl Sauzo to file an appeal with the Appeals Court asking for a stay because the judge declined to provide a true copy of the order:

"We are filing this appeal because the order for the hearing of the accused has not been signed and provided in the legally prescribed form to the legal representatives of Flores Lanza; it hasn't been written by Judge Claudio Aguilar,"

said Suazo.

There's actually more strange behavior by Judge Aguilar.

Apparently he didn't let Suazo or Flores Lanza make any declarations during the arraignment. If Raúl Suzao was not allowed to make declarations during the hearing, this also violates the Code of Judicial Procedure, Article 15, the right to have assistance with defense.

And that would mean the orders against Flores Lanza must be set aside. Article 15 states that violation of this right

will produce absolute nullification of the judicial acts that were produced without the participation of the defense lawyer of the accused.

According to Suazo, Judge Aguilar's actions have indeed set up the conditions to file for nullification of the order due to procedural violations by the court.

And there is one final twist, one other example of the surreal in what passes for a judicial system in Honduras.

Any appeal of Claudio Aguilar's ruling must be heard by the Appeals Court. The chief justice of the Appeals Court, Magistrate Sixto Aguilar, is Claudio Aguilar's father.

When Manuel Zelaya Rosales's defense lawyers appealed a previous ruling of Claudio Aguilar's, Magistrate Sixto Aguilar rightly recused himself.

Expect to see that happen again. And maybe we can expect on the appeals court level, again, Claudio Aguilar's ruling will be overturned. Anything else is simply injustice.