Constitutional Branch Defends Itself

The Constitutional Branch of the Honduran Supreme Court attempted to defend its actions in declaring a winner in the municipal elections of San Luis, Comayagua a week ago. The notice they released makes it clear they're responding to pressure on social media.  Their defense is akin to stamping their foot and saying "because I said so".

The court reaffirmed its belief in the rule of law, and stated that its decision in this case was well founded in the constitution and laws of Honduras.  It also reaffirmed its right to hear the case, claiming dominion over the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE).  It further wished to point out to the public that it was Santos Zelaya Chacón who sought to appeal the TSE's decision claiming his due process rights had been violated.  So its not the Supreme Court's fault that they had to hear this case, its Santos Zelaya Chacón's according to their logic.  The court argued that tossing a coin does not strip one of one's rights to appeal the election, except that it does in the TSE rules to which all candidates agree when running for office.

The court went on to allege that the Municipality of San Luis was notified not to allow anyone to assume office, that the case had been admitted, but that the Municipality ignored the court.  Finally, the court says its decision was firmly based in law and the constitution, without providing any backing for that claim.  They have not released a written judgement and this decision may never be published.  They simply assert they did the right thing. 

This branch of the court, packed by Congress with supporters of the neoliberal policies advocated by Juan Orlando Hernandez, you will recall, voted to install the National Party candidate, Santos Ivan Zelaya Chacón as Mayor of San Luis despite the Tribunal Supremo Electoral ruling that the election was a tie.  Tie runoff procedures in Honduras call for both candidates to agree to settle the tie by the toss of a coin.  Both candidates agreed, a coin was tossed, and Lenny Hernandez, the Liberal Party candidate won.  The Tribunal Supremo Electoral awarded him a certificate of election, and on January 27, 2014 he assumed office.

The TSE is supposed to be the ultimate election authority, but of course, that is no longer the case in post-coup Honduras. The hierarchy now goes Congress -> Supreme Court -> Tribunal Supremo Electoral.

In the meantime, Santos Ivan Zelaya Chacón decided to appeal to the Supreme Court claiming his due process rights had been violated.  The Constitutional Branch of the court took the case, and issued a 5-0 decision agreeing with him, and awarding him the election.

Since then, the Liberal Party filed a challenge appealing the decision; their appeal was apparently rejected by the Supreme Court with the statement that they have no standing.  The Constitutional Branch ruling is threatening the pact between the National and Liberal Parties in Congress.  The TSE then voted to affirm the Constitutional Branch ruling, and the very next day, the building housing the Mayor's office burned down in Sal Luis.  The same week a Liberal Party leader in San Luis was murdered.

Edmundo Orellana, admittedly a partisan of the Liberal party, wrote yesterday that:

Everything that has happened is the fault of the Constitutional Branch; none of these things would have happened in this municipality if they hadn't stuck their noses where they shouldn't.  This is a political problem and the Supreme Court is not authorized by the Constitution for this.  The magistrates have violated the Constitution of the Republic and thereby are exposed the consequences of this violation.

We happen to agree with Orellana, that the court took an ill considered and  unreasoned political decision, not a legal one.  We do not choose to question the court's assertion that Zelaya Chacón's due process rights were violated, but rather question why they themselves trample on the due process rights of the opposing candidate and the voters by appointing Zelaya Chacón as Mayor, unilaterally, and without any offered justification, other than that the TSE denied him his due process rights. The TSE's alleged error in denying Zelaya Chacón his due process rights does not merit the court ignoring the rights of the voters, and the rights of the opposition candidate, Lenny Flores.

Congress in the meantime is working on a compromise solution in which there would be a new election.  Yes, for once the Honduran Congress is making sense.  Both the legitimately aggrieved Liberal Party and even the voters of San Luis itself have called for a special election to determine the outcome, but Zelaya Chacón says he will not recognize the outcome of any such special election, arguing that only he had his rights trampled on by the TSE.

Cooler heads have prevailed.  The threat of the Liberal Party to break its alliance with the National Party over this issue worked, after they meet with the leaders of the Anti-Corruption Party and Libre to present a unified front in Congeress calling for a new election, which the National Party rejected.  The compromise solution arrived at, preserving so far the fragile Liberal-National Party coalition, has been for both candidates to irrevocably resign from candidacy to the office.  This probably will force a new election for Mayor in San Luis, Comayagua, but the Tribunal Supremo Electoral isn't saying that, as yet, preferring to wait for the paperwork and "study" the issue.

The only way Hondurans found to preserve anyones rights after the Supreme Court acted was to preserve no ones rights.  Lenny Flores and Santos Zelaya are now out of it, but the political parties will probably get a chance to propose new candidates for Mayor, and the people of San Luis might finally get a chanced for representation that they voted for, instead of representation imposed on them by a fully politicized Supreme Court.

Nice Work If You Can Get it!

The press has blown the whistle on waste in Coalianza, the government commission that negotiates and regulates the sale of government assets to the private sector, and forms government - private partnerships in Honduras.

It seems that the 3 commissioners of Coalianza recieved a pay raise when they took office in January.  Two of them, Miguel Ángel Gámez and Erasmo Virgilio Padilla had their pay raised from roughly 150,000 lempiras monthly ($7142.86) to 199,000 lempiras a month ($9576.19).  The third commissioner, Zonia Morales, received a raise from 111,800 lempiras ($5323.81) to 159,000 lempiras a month ($7571.43).  By comparison, the President receives a salary of 86,000 lempiras monthly ($4095.24).

The commissioners acknowledge the raise, but claim it was authorized in 2013 and figured into their budget.  When asked why they continued to accept these overly large salarys, Gamez told the press that in fact, they hadn't yet had a chance to have a meeting!  For the last three months, the time they've been collecting these salaries, they've done nothing.  When asked why that was, Gamez redirected blame back on the current government, stating:

They still have not named the Executive Secretary of Coalianza.  This looks to me like a bad intention and far from benefiting, it damages the institution.

So, Gamez is throwing it back on the government, which he says hasn't named his boss, so they could not meet and roll back their enormous salaries.  Boo Hoo.

Luckly Juan Orlando Hernandez did just that today, acting to roll back all three salaries to 150,000 lempiras a month.  They still have not met.  They still have not done anything.  They just keep collecting some of the highest salaries in the government for sitting on their hands.

That's government waste of slightly over $80,000 in salaries in this one small agency.  Nice work if you can get it.

Public Prosecutor: ZEDEs Are Legal

It will come to no surprise to anyone keeping track of anything to do with model cities in Honduras that the Public Prosecutor's office has issued an opinion just before Easter finding that the law enabling the new Zonas Especiales de Desarrrollo y Empleo (ZEDE) is legal.  The position paper, requested by the Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court came from the Office for Defense of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court admitted a case challenging the ZEDE law as unconstitutional because in order to pass it Congress changed some of the supposedly unchangeable articles of the Honduran constitution.  The argument is that Congress, in modifying Articles 294, 303, and 329 violated Article 374's provision that prohibits modification of Articles of the Constitution related to the territory and form of government of Honduras, the so called "stoney" articles.  The Constitutional changes  modify clauses that define the territory and form of government of Honduras.

On accepting the case, the court followed procedure in requesting a legal opinion from the Public Prosecutor's office.  It skipped over the step of asking Congress for its documentation, however, putting this appeal on a fast track.

The Public Prosecutor, Oscar Chinchilla was formerly a member of the Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court and was the sole member of that branch to find the original Model Cities legislation constitutional.  His four fellow justices were summarily dismissed (illegally) by the same Honduran Congress that later appointed Chinchilla as Public Prosecutor.

Thus, the opinion in favor of the ZEDE law was never in doubt.

These Are Not The Pilots You're Looking For.....

As quickly as they came into custody yesterday, they left.  Yesterday Honduran authorities at Ramon Villeda Morales airport in San Pedro Sula arrested two Americans asserting they were the pilots of the Gulfstream jet allegedly abandoned on April 1 in Roatan.  Temporary held were Luis Felipe Parra, a naturalized US citizen born in Colombia, and US citizen Hector Manuel Guerra.  Guerra is a licensed pilot according to the FAA database, but Parra is not.

Both were released this morning, supposedly at the disposition of the Dirección de Lucha Contra el Narcotráfico (DLCN) of the Public Prosecutor's office, but both immediately boarded a flight to Miami and left the country.

Elvis Guzmán, spokesperson for the local Public Prosecutor's office stated that the two were released because all their paperwork was in order.  They had both the proper immigration stamps in their passports and had filed a valid flight plan with permission from the Honduran Civil Aviation Authority to land in Roatan.  In the flight plan they had even requested that the plane be allowed to remain at the airport for two weeks; hence it was never abandoned.  There were no indications the plane had been used to transport drugs.  Therefore there was no crime here and they had to let them go.

Apparently InterAirports, the company that has the concession to run four international airports in Honduras, was the one that complained that the jet might be abandoned.  Either they had no access to the flight plans, which seems unlikely, or they're just incompetent, which is much more likely. 

While responsible for airport security they let millions of dollars in drug money pass through security "undetected", including $7 million in cash carried in 6 suitcases by 4 individuals on a flight from Honduras to Panama.  Panamanian authorities detected the cash and arrested 3 of the 4 individuals traveling with the bags.  Interairports was either complicit in letting the cash leave the country, or more likely, wasn't actually screening luggage since that would have cost them money.

Honduran authorities still have offered no explanation as to why they repeatedly told the press that the pilots they were looking for were Mexican citizens named Erick Emanuel Mejia Montes and Darimel Guerrero Ríos.

Apparently nothing to see here, except incompetence.

Dead Man Flying

A nice older executive jet landed at Roatan airport in Honduras on Tuesday, April 1.  Honduran authorities reported that the pilots, Darimel Guerrero Ríos, and Eric Emanuel Mejia Montes walked out of the airport and never returned to the jet.  Honduran authorities didn't notice this for a few days, however.  The two pilots have reportedly disappeared, probably having left Honduras.

We might be able to clear that up for the Hondurans. 

Eric Emanuel Mejia Montes was reportedly killed the very next day,  April 2,  in Torres, Venezuela when the Venezuelan air force shot down a Cessna with Mexican registration.  Two burned bodies were found in the wreckage of the plane, and one of them was identified as Mejia Montes, apparently through his passport.   What we know is that on April 1, someone purporting to be Mejia Montes flew a jet into Roatan airport, and the very next day someone identified as the very same Mejia Montes was shot down and killed in a Cessna in Torres, Venezuela while supposedly running drugs.

The jet in Honduras may or may not be an American registered Gulfstream II with registration N707KD.  Early versions of the story said the plane had a Mexican registration and showed a picture of a jet with Mexican registration MTX-01 on the engine.  The Honduran press is often unreliable on details, often attaching unrelated pictures to articles.  That appears to be the case here.

Later versions of the story alleged an American registration and showed a picture of N707KD and reported that as the registration of the jet.  Furthermore, an El Heraldo story supported Mexican registration, but gives flight details and an aircraft description of N707KD in the text of this article.  The plane pictured parked at Roatan in this La Prensa article is clearly N707KD.  Everyone agrees the jet is a Gulfstream IISP with two engines.  This jet, according to the FAA, can haul up to 12,500 pounds of cargo, or carry up to 22 passengers.  This plane is 37 years old and still flying, and belongs to a company in Florida. 

According to FlightAware, N707KD last flew out of the US from a general aviation airport in Miami to Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico on March 8.  This is a similar flight profile to a similar Gulfstream abandoned in Roatan just over a year ago.  That plane, N951RK, was abandoned by its Mexican pilots on Roatan March 22, 2013, and later reclaimed by its American owners Aero Group, without problems.  It had tested positive for cocaine.

So who really flew the current Gulfstream jet to Roatan, from where, and why?  If it is the American registered jet, what, if anything, does the owner know about who rented it, and for how long? These are questions that the DEA doesn't ever seem to ask.  US planes continue to fuel the flow of drugs through Central America.

Hernández Packed Court Goes Political

The Honduran Supreme Court, or more properly, the Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court, packed with National Party supporters while Juan Orlando Hernández was head of Congress, paid a dividend yesterday by issuing a blatantly political opinion, with no legal argument to back it up.

The case has its origins in the November, 2013 elections for Mayor of San Luis, Comayagua.  Leny Flores Suazo of the Liberal Party was running against Santos Iván Zelaya Chacón of the National Party. 

Both candidates declared themselves the winner, forcing the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) to recount the votes.  But recount in Honduras does not mean what you think it means.  A "recount" in Honduras entails just re-tallying the votes already recording on the tally sheets, not recounting each vote.  The Tribunal Supremo Electoral has maintained that this is the only recount mechanism allowed under its regulations. 

After the recount, the TSE declared the election a tie. 

The candidates then both voluntarily agreed to flip a coin, and whoever won the toss would assume office.  This procedure is called for under Honduran law, if both candidates voluntarily agree to it.  Leny Flores Suazo won the coin toss, and the TSE formally declared him the winner of the election.  He was given paperwork by the TSE naming him the winner.  He was sworn in to office on January 27, 2014.

More than a month later, the National Party candidate appealed to the TSE to declare the election null and void and call for a new election. 

After the TSE turned him down, he appealed to the Supreme Court alleging there was no transparency in the recount process. We tend to sympathize with Zelaya Chacón, because the "recount" is actually pointless, unless you believe a simple math error, rather than the original vote counting, is the problem. But it isn't particularly impenetrable: the TSE adds the numbers a second time.

The Constitutional Branch accepted the case, and following usual procedure solicited an opinion from the Public Prosecutor, Oscar Chinchilla. He is a former Supreme Court justice himself, and the only justice that Hernández kept in the Constitutional Branch when he replaced the other four. 

Despite these ties, Oscar Chinchilla actually concurred with the TSE, arguing that what it did was correct and in accordance with the Electoral Law and the Law of Political Parties, which called for the the coin toss in the case of a tie if both parties agreed to it. There is no dispute of their agreement to abide by the results of the coin toss.

The Constitutional Branch, however, unanimously rejected the Public Prosecutor's opinion and found against the TSE. 

They ruled that the TSE violated the transparency requirements by not immediately consulting the original ballots themselves, rather than the tally sheets, and this failure violated Zelaya Chacón's rights to due process even before the coin toss happened. 

They reportedly wrote, in part:

It is clear to this Constitutional Chamber that the Supreme Electoral Tribunal has violated the political rights of the complainant, adopting resolutions lacking sufficient motivation, lacking the accuracy of the procedure.

But this is where the train left the tracks.  Rather than order the TSE to reconsult the ballots, or to hold a new election for mayor if the original ballots were no longer available (which is likely), they wrote:

Because of all the reasons previously cited, the appeal placed by Mr. Eneas Portillo Cabrera for Mr. Santos Iván Zelaya Chacón, should be granted with the effect that it restores to him full possession and exercise of his political rights, in such a manner that he can exercise for the rest of the time allowed, the job of Mayor of the town of San Luis, department of Comayagua.

The court simply declared Zelaya Chacón the winner, with no constitutional or legal basis provided for such a ruling, and awarded him the election.

Flores Suazo is reported to have said:

So far, it looks like in Honduras, the Supreme Court imposes Mayors [on towns] and sets aside the resolutions of the Election Tribunal.

This is exactly what happened.  Neither every one's due process rights nor the people's votes to determine the outcome of the election were preserved by this ruling.  Why even bother to hold elections?

But that's not the end of this story.  Flores Suazo called on Mauricio Villeda, his party's head of its Congressional delegation.  He has received the unanimous support of the Liberal Party congressional delegation.  Villeda told the press:

The Liberal party was surprised and is angry by the legal decision handed down by the Constitutional Branch of the Supreme Court concerning the case of the Mayor of San Luis.  This election was a tie and was decided by a coin toss.  Afterwards the Constitutional Branch got involved; listen well to what I am saying:  concerning election law, where the highest authority is the Supreme Election Tribunal.   This has surprised us and we don't want a precedent like this to exist in Honduras.

When asked who might have pressured the court, Villeda said:

Possibly various people from the National Party because they have replaced a Liberal Party Mayor.  Sufficient corruption exists already in this National Party government for there to also be corruption in election business.  We must make it clean and only the social communications media can help...

Villeda went on to indicate that this will become an issue in the alliance in Congress between the National and Liberal parties, saying that what the Liberals enabled in Congress, they can just as easily make impossible by breaking the alliance.

The Liberal Party has indicated that once they have had time to study this decision, they will appeal it to the full Supreme Court, but in the meantime, that court has imposed a mayor who was not elected on San Luis, Comayagua, for political, not legal, reasons.

NGO Do-Over

Maybe it's not a good idea to try and purge non-governmental organizations like C-Libre and FIAN after all. 

It just might get you in trouble.

Today Juan Orlando Hernández met with representatives of several unnamed non-governmental organizations and his Minister of Human Rights, Justice, Government, and Decentralization, Rigoberto Chang Castillo. 

Afterward, a communique read by his chief of staff, Reinaldo Sanchez, ordered a review and restructuring of the Unidad de Registro y Seguimiento de Asociaciones Civiles (URSAC), the unit that just a few days ago tried to cancel the registration of 5,429 NGOs claiming deficiencies in their filings. 

The goal of the review and restructuring will be to have better control over the NGOs and to modernize the handling of NGO authorizations and the filing of required reports. 

The government also walked back the cancellation of those 5429 organizations, ordering a new review of each one's files.

Sanchez noted that the government was aware of the importance of the role played by civil society and the NGOs in strengthening Honduras's democracy and diminishing economic inequality.

Clearly, someone wasn't on the same page...

Oops!