The Death of Culture

Honduras no longer has a Secretary of State in Culture, Art, and Sports. The carcass that the last two mismanaging Ministers of Culture left will be picked over for the bits that the Hernández government feels are effective and can be used to further its goals and missions, and the rest will be dumped.

It's not that this comes as a complete surprise.

We've been vocal about the rampant neglect of the last two Culture ministers under the Lobo Sosa administration. There was the one with the strange notion of what culture is, and the one for whom culture is to sponsor street fairs at which folk dancing and his beloved chess are taught.  Both let the ministry stagnate, and become irrelevant.

So when Jorge Ramon Hernandez Alcerro announced today that it would disappear, along with the Secretariates of Justice and Human Rights, Tourism, and Planning, few should have been surprised. 

The Hernández administration chose to model their government re-organization after the reorganization carried out by Rafael Correa in Ecuador.

But Ecuador still has a Ministry of Culture.  Honduras will not.

In not having a cabinet-level Minister of Culture, Honduras will become unique in Latin America.

In some countries this role is combined with the Ministry of Education; in others it is a stand alone Ministry; in still others it's paired with Tourism; but everyone else has one.

Not Honduras; not any more.

Hernandez Alcerro tells us not to worry about the abolished ministries, because this does not mean that their missions and functions necessarily will be going away.

Each will be picked apart, broken up, and the parts deemed effective will continue.  But they will be assigned to a lower level, headed by non-cabinet functionaries within the new super ministries.

The breakup of Culture will be the responsibility of Alden Rivera, Minister of Competitiveness and Employment, the place that the functions of this former ministry have been assigned in the new cabinet structure.

This decision will be even more consequential than the demotion in level of administration in changing the role of the remaining entities forming part of the former ministry of culture-- including the Instituto Hondureño de Antropología e Historia.

Rivera has said he has 21 institutions assigned to his ministry, and he will be reducing them to twelve over the next several weeks. Some, like Tourism, will become Institutes.

The mission of all twelve of the surviving institutions, according to Rivera, will be to

serve the Nation in terms of economic services and to stimulate the labor of the businesses and entrepreneurs to have a transforming effect for the country.

This mission is a far cry from the role of the now dissolved ministry, which during its earlier history worked to increase the appreciation of the Honduran people for their own history and culture, and supported non-governmental institutions and efforts to preserve, develop, and share knowledge about those topics nationally and internationally.

It is that role that has made cabinet-level offices of culture universal in Latin America.

But not in Honduras, now.

The Shape of the New Honduran Government

The Honduran government under Juan Orlando Hernández is on a slimming diet that hopes to save 4000 million lempiras (about $190 million). 

It will accomplish this slimming by radically restructuring the government and its bureaucracy.  As a first step, Honduras has already gone from having 38 cabinet level Ministers, to having only seven.  There will be a total of twelve Subsecretaries, all of them reporting to one of the seven ministers.

Here's the seven ministries, and what existing government institutions will be preserved under them:

0.  Executive Branch Administration (no official name announced)
          Minister - Reinaldo Sanchez
          Advisor - Ebal Diaz
          Communications and Strategy - Hilda Hernandez
          Coordinator - Jorge Ramon Hernandez Alcerro

*1.  Gabinete de Competitividad y Empleo  (Competiveness and Employment)
          Minister - Alden Rivera
          S. de Trabajo - Carlos Alberto Madero Erazo
          S. de Desarrollo Economico - Jorge Lobo
          SERNA (Secretaria de Recursos Naturales) - José Antonio Galdámez

*2. Gabinete de Economia y Finanzas (Economy and Finances)
          Minister - Wilfredo Cerrato
          BCH (Banco Central de Honduras) - Marlon Tabora
          DEI (equivalent of the IRS) - Miriam Guzman

*3.  Gabinete de Energia e Infraestructura (Energy and Infrastructure)
          Minister - Roberto Ordoñez
          SOPTRAVI (Secretaria de Obras Publicas) - Roberto Ordoñez

*4.  Gabinete de Gobernabilidad y Modernización (Government and Modernization)
          Minister - Ricardo Alvarez
          S. de Interior y Poblacion - Rigoberto Chang Castillo

*5.  Gabinete de Inclusion y Desarrollo Social (Participation and Social Development)
          Minister - Lisandro Rosales
          S. de Salud - Yolany Batres
          S. de Educación - Marlon Escoto

*6.  Gabinete de Seguridad (Security)
          Minister - Arturo Corrales
          Vice Minister - Alejandra Hernandez
          S. de Seguridad - Arturo Corrales
          S. de Defensa - Samuel Reyes

7.  Gabinete de Relaciones Exteriores
          Minister - Mireya Aguero de Corrales


While a lot of decisions remain to be made, the following Secretaries of State are abolished:

1. Secretaria de Cultura, Artes y Deportes
2. Secretaria de Planificacion y Cooperacion Externa
3. Secretaria de Turismo
4. Secretaria de Justicia y Derechos Humanos
5. Secretaria de Pueblos Indigenas y Afrodescendientes
6. Secretaria de la Juventud

"Abolished" here means that these are no longer Secretarias de Estado, cabinet-level offices. It is not that their functions will necessarily go away.

Those functions will be evaluated. Jorge Ramon Hernandez Alcerro, the Coordinator in the Presidential Ministry, has the responsibility for keeping each Ministry to its assigned goals, and for determining by Tuesday, February 4, how the functions of each secretaria that is not being continued get integrated into the existing structure.

As a hint at what may happen: Alden Rivera has explained that in his Ministry,  Competitividad y Empleo,  there are currently twenty-one institutions and those will be reduced to twelve.

 So stay tuned.  There will be more changes.

Political Promises in Honduras

They say you can tell when a lawyer is lying because his lips are moving.

Well, in Honduras, the same should be said of politicians.

Back on July 20, Congress passed a controversial law called the Ley de promoción del desarrollo y reconversion de deuda publica (Decreto 145-2013) by which Honduras seeks to monetize its income stream from its national resources.  We wrote about it, and the controversy surrounding the sudden introduction and passage of the law back on July 29, and you should reread it for details about the law.

The law was then sent to Porfirio Lobo Sosa for action on July 23.

Now in theory, Honduran law says Lobo Sosa had 10 days to either sign or veto the law.  He signs the law by writing an order that says "Por Tanto Ejecutese" or vetos it by writing "Vuelva al Congreso" with a letter explaining what he thinks is wrong with it.  If he takes no action, it enters limbo.  It becomes law, but it is not in effect or enforceable until its printed in La Gaceta.

Porfirio Lobo Sosa initially defended the law, saying :

To veto this law would be to go against the interests of the nation.

But the law provoked a lot of opposition, both from business( the Associacion Nacional de Industriales de Honduras (ANDI) and the Asociacion Nacional de Minería Metálica, and even COHEP), unions (like Sindicato de Trabajadores de la Industria de Bebidas y Similares), and campesino groups.

On August 15, 2013, after Lobo Sosa had to have acted one way or another, he announced he would not sign the law, not because he didn't believe in it, but rather because it might hurt Juan Orlando Hernandez's chances of getting elected:

I'm not going to convert this into a campaign issue.  When the new president arrives he can decide to approve it or not; it will stay in the desk for him.

Now he was very clear to say he's not going to veto the law, but just put it in his desk.  That meant the law was already law, just not in effect because it hadn't been published.

And the law wasn't a campaign issue.

Then the Presidential campaign concluded, with Juan Orlando Hernandez declared  President. When it could no longer influence the results of the election, Porfirio Lobo Sosa signed the law on December 18, and ordered its publication in La Gaceta where it appeared in the December 20, 2013 issue, which came out this week (they're slow to publish).

It is now in effect, and the government of Juan Orlando Hernandez, who championed the law, will have 90 days to implement the administrative structure and regulations that will govern the issuance  securities backed by  natural resources income streams.

Honduras wants to sell the net present value of its wind, its rivers, and its mineral rights.  Who will buy them?

ENEE to be privatized

At the very end of its term, the out-going Congress in Honduras passed a law Monday mandating that no later than June, 2015, the Empresa Nacional de Energia Electrica must be taken private.

Well, semi-private.

The law has two main thrusts.  It first creates the Comision Reguladora de Energia Electrica (CREE) a commission to regulate the newly created electricity marketplace in Honduras.

CREE will be situated in the Superministry of Strategic Planning, but the law designs it to be semi-independent, with its own budget and technical resources.  It will be charged with setting up a free market electricity marketplace for Honduras.

The legislation enables private companies to build competing transmission and distribution systems.  Emil Hawit, current head of ENEE, says that this energy marketplace will result in lower electricity prices for Hondurans

The new law also mandates that the Empresa Nacional de Energia Electrica be broken up into three private companies:  one charged with competing in the power generation market, one charged with running the current power transmission system and electrical grid, and a third overseeing the distribution of power to customers.

Each company will be given its own shares, but the government will continue to own all the shares for at least the next 30 years.  Current ENEE employees will be assigned to one of the three companies based on their duties.

Much of Honduras's high electricity price is based on the ridiculous energy contracts ENEE signed with Honduran power generators, contracts that had ENEE buying all of the fuel oil used to generate power, and still paying a premium for the power generated with that oil.

Hawit did allow that Hondurans will have to pay the real price for electricity, suggesting that the new law might also end subsidies for light users: people with low energy consumption.

So on the macro-level, costs may come down; but with private companies and shareholders expecting profits, there may well be greater impact on the most vulnerable users of electricty.

Welcome to the world the Hernández administration wants to promote: the rush by the outgoing congress to pass legislation before the more diverse legislative body comes in is giving us a much more transparent view of his vision than anything he or his transition team has had to say.

Police Cleansing: Gone

The lame duck Honduran Congress was busy yesterday.

Among their "accomplishments" was the elimination of the Comision de la Reforma de Seguridad Publica, the group responsible for developing the current procedures for cleansing the police.

The Cominision de la Reforma de Seguridad Publica was created on 31 January 2012, given the responsibility to design, plan, and certify a process totally reforming the police, the Public Prosecutor's office, and the Judicial branch.  They were charged with reorganizing said governmental entities and proposing any needed legislation to back up the changes.

While they worked out procedures to detect and clear out some kinds of corruption in the police and Public Prosecutor's office, and drafted laws to back up their model of reforms to the public security aparatus in Honduras, the Lobo Sosa government never acted on those changes, effectively pocket vetoing them.

Juan Orlando Hernández, the incoming president, has a completely different idea of how the reforms should go, emphasizing building up military police rather than employing the community policing (based on a Japanese model) that the CSRP had proposed.

The lame duck Congress, ever so much in Hernández's pocket, lamented that the CSRP "never delivered the expected results" and so yesterday they voted the CSRP out of existence.

RIP CSRP.

New Bajo Aguan Military Commander

Colonel German Alfaro Escalante, announced that the Chairman of the Honduran Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Freddy Santiago Diaz, has decided to replace him in his role as head of the Fuerza de Tarea Xatruch, running military operations in the Bajo Aguan.

His replacement will be Colonel René Martínez.  Alfaro said this was part of a larger shake-up of command around the country.

Tensions between campesinos and human rights activists and the military in the Bajo Aguan may have been eclipsed by the election, but they did not disappear.

Alfaro, a 1984 graduate of at least one School of the Americas course (Infantry Official Basic Training), was an outspoken critic of Rights Action co-director Annie Bird. On December 12, Alfaro, following up on dubious claims made by Ambassador Lisa Kubiske on December 10, accused Bird of inciting campesinos to invade African Palm plantations in the Bajo Aguan. He said that the military was investigating her for allegedly subversive action with the campesinos, and for supposedly filing false claims of human rights violations by the military in the Bajo Aguan.

It remains to be seen whether Alfaro's replacement signals any change in the posture of the Armed Forces, or just a change in the face of the military operation.

Denial, Anger, and Bargaining: The Liberal Party of Honduras and the Stages of Grief

The Kubler-Ross model of grief has five stages:  denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance.  The Liberal Party in Honduras is somewhere between denial and anger after the November 24, 2013 elections. It seems poised to fragment more as it attempts to come to terms with its losses-- of party members, and of the offices of president and head of congress.

Let's start with denial. The Liberal Party wants to blame LIBRE (and to a lesser extent PAC) for all of the problems that beset Honduran society.  This despite the fact that the National Party has ruled Honduras for the last four years, and the Liberal Party ruled it for seven months after the coup of 2009, in which Liberal party members illegally removed from office the last Liberal Party president.

Which brings us to anger. The 2009 coup ripped apart the Liberal Party. A particularly conservative part of the party took control. The more liberal members of the party largely abandoned it and went on to form the Frente and LIBRE. As the election results from November 2013 show, about half of the supporting electorate left it as well. That has the remaining Liberal Party angry at others who it blames for its diminished position in Honduran politics.

If Kubler-Ross is right, the party needs to move on, and we can expect to see bargaining and depression before they finally reach acceptance.

Bargaining does seem to be the order of the day.

Since 2009 the Consejo Central Ejecutivo del Partido Liberal (CCEPL), which runs the party, has been in conservative hands, with Elvin Santos Lozano, and more recently Mauricio Villeda Bermudez, serving as President of the Executive council.

The Party leadership has not delivered a consistent message to its newly elected Congressional delegation about what it should be doing vis-a-vis the organization of the upcoming session of Congress.

Mauricio Villeda, the losing presidential candidate for the party, told congress members to wait and consult with the people, represented by the municipal mayors who were also elected in November. The municipal mayors have now spoken: they told the Congressional delegation to negotiate with the National Party for a Liberal president of Congress, in return for acting as allies (which would give back to the National Party the voting majority, but not the ability they have had to amend the constitution).

Today, another conservative member of the Party, Benjamin Bogran, who was its coordinator for the past election and is Secretary of the party, advised the party members in Congress to make no alliances, except with the people of Honduras.

Rumors have been flying suggesting that some Liberal Party Congressmen are following the mayor's wishes and talking with the National Party leadership about maybe having a Liberal Party president of Congress in exchange for an alliance between the two parties.

Other factions in the party, such as that represented by Yani Rosenthal, current head of its Congressional delegation, see that as death for the party.

However, the conservative faction that currently controls the Liberal Party blames LIBRE and PAC for all their problems, and sees this as a case of better the devil you know than the devil you don't know.  Bogran said that he could not support an alliance with LIBRE or PAC because "the two of them were conspiring to destroy the Liberal Party".

That's strong, and clearly angry language, but it is also misplaced anger. It is the current leadership of the Liberal Party with its swing to the right of the political spectrum that is responsible for its current loss of significance, but they cannot see it.  They're in denial.

As it struggles to stay significant, and remain a viable party that can attract voters, the best political strategy for the Liberal Party would probably be to not form any alliance, denying both the National Party, and the opposition block formed by LIBRE and PAC the required majority to pass legislation. That would allow the Liberal Party to effectively be the swing vote in policies from all sides.

Bogran seems to be suggesting that something like this actually is the leadership's position when he instructed the Congressional delegation to make no alliances except to do what is best for the Honduran people.  The party seems to be struggling to control its Congressional delegation, with Bogran's words an attempt to reign them back in and under party control.

Will it work?

It hasn't so far.  Almost half the Liberal Party delegation reportedly has had some kind of talks with Juan Orlando Hernández and the National Party directorate about leadership positions for Liberals in Congress.

Villeda seems to have lost control of the directorate of the Party. Vos El Soberano reports that Carlos Flores Facussé (ex-president, owner of La Tribuna)  has taken control of the party behind the scenes, comparing it to the coup Flores Facussé's father staged against Villeda Bermudez's father in 1963.  Reportedly, Flores Faccussé wants the party to be a viable platform from which to launch his daughter on a future presidential campaign. Villeda Bermudez has remained silent, and has been out of the country since before the New Year.

Congress meets to organize on Tuesday, January 21. The new Congress will be sworn in and elect a provisional directorate. That provisional directorate then will name the permanent directorship of Congress, those who will run the body for the next two years.  This must be done by Saturday, January 25.

It should be an interesting week.