Honduran Congress to Consider Amnesty, Withdrawal from ALBA

In just three weeks Pepe Lobo is set to assume the presidency in Honduras, but the crisis in the country continues to fester as de facto president Roberto Micheletti has yet to hand over the power to a unity government. On Monday, the AP writes, Lobo once again stated that he is encouraging Mr. Micheletti to step down, per the terms of the “Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.” “Micheletti should help Honduras and give up power. That is what we are looking for because this crisis should not have winners and losers…and we continue talking so that we comply with the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord,” Lobo said on HRN radio. On the future of Mel Zelaya, Lobo stated that his future had already been determined by the Honduran Congress which voted against his restitution in December. “Zelaya is now an ex-president according to his own decision to submit himself to the opinion of the legislature,” maintained the president elect.

In other news from Honduras, the same Congress that rejected Zelaya’s return to power is expected to meet this week to discuss the issue of amnesty for all parties to the June coup. Legislators will also take up the issue of Honduras’s exit from the ALBA bloc. A decision on both issues is expected sometime around the 15th of January, reports AFP.

Meanwhile, the European Union, in a recently released statement, again demanded that a “full and transparent” investigation into the recent assassinations of journalists and civil society activists be conducted by Honduran officials. There’s news of increased “militarization” in rural areas of northeast Honduras, an area of much resistance activity and a beneficiary of land reform initiated under the Zelaya government. And, as IPS reports, corruption continues to be a major issue at nearly every level of governance in Honduras. The independent National Anti-Corruption Council of Honduras recently released its National Transparency Report which shows that corruption is the third most pressing concern of Hondurans, behind crime and unemployment (note: data was collected before the June coup against the Zelaya government). “The fact that these three problems stand out among the concerns of the general public shows that the institutional changes needed for greater development are not taking place,” Rolando Sierra, the report's coordinator, tells IPS.

With other stories today,

· Keiko Fujimori, daughter of Alberto Fujimori and candidate for president in 2011 Peruvian elections, said Monday that her father’s legal battle has not ended, even after the Supreme Court upheld his 25 year sentence for human rights abuses this weekend. The 34 year old congresswoman said her 2011 campaign would have as one of its primary objectives the pardoning of her father after a trial she calls “absolutely unjust” and “lacking in objectivity.” However, the president of the Constitutional Tribunal in Peru, Juan Vergara, reiterated Monday that the Supreme Court’s decision was not open to another appeal. Numerous international observers have commended the judicial process.

· Also, from Peru, IPS interviews Jesús Manáces, coordinator of a special commission convened by the Peruvian government to investigate last June’s massacre of 33 indigenous protestors and police officers in the Amazonian town of Bagua. Manáces refused to sign the final report of the commission, saying it “does not include the views of everyone involved and does not identify those who were responsible, in the political, police and military spheres.” For more, see the full interview here.

· A recent Time report examines kidnapping in Venezuela where there are now approx. five abductions per day in the capital of Caracas alone. The independent Venezuelan Observatory of Violence in Caracas estimates the country sees up to 9,000 kidnappings each year, says the magazine, while local human-rights NGO Provea, says there were 518 officially reported kidnappings between September 2008 and September 2009, a rise of 41% from the previous year. The Venezuelan National Assembly passed a law this year that forbids private ransom negotiation and requires families to report kidnappings so authorities can then freeze their assets and prevent ransom payment. But, says Time, “while the law may be based on sound crime-prevention theory, in practice it may well compel kidnap-victim families to be even more secretive because of their lack of trust in the Venezuelan judicial system.”

· Also from Venezuela, the government recently reported that nearly 60 tons of marijuana and cocaine were confiscated in 2009, 11% more than in 2008.

· AFP reports on the elections in Costa Rica, set to occur on February 7. The news agency says “insecurity” has become the number one campaign issue due to a rise in common crime and increased activity of drug traffickers in recent years. Laura Chinchilla, of the governing centrist PLN is leading in most pre-election polls, ahead of the right-wing candidate, Otto Guevara.

· Finally in opinions this morning, the LA Times writes in an editorial today that the recent killing of an American educator in Durango, Mexico shows that Mexico’s drug problems are the United States’ also. “There is the fact that U.S. consumption drives the illicit narcotics trade, of course. But there is also the reality that social and business relationships binding the two countries have resulted in a border that cannot guarantee Americans protection from drug violence,” writes that paper. (See also a recent Houston Chronicle report about the “mega empire” of the Gulf Cartel in the Houston area, whose roots go back to the 1980s. Texas Dept. of Public Safety Director, Steve McCraw calls the Gulf Cartel the “most significant organized crime threat to the Western Hemisphere, without question.”)

And in the Miami Herald, columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner criticizes the recently published book of Ecuadorean President, Rafael Correa (Ecuador: From Banana Republic to Non-republic). Montaner calls Correa a “statist” and “Third Worldist” for his words of praise for thinkers including John Maynard Keynes and Raul Prebisch.