I begin this morning with an update from Honduras where new President Porfirio Lobo continues his attempt to make amends with the international community amidst ongoing political tensions and differences in his own country. The AP reported late last week that Lobo’s foreign minister, Mario Canahuati, would be headed to Washington shortly to try to arrange a face-to-face meeting between Mr. Lobo and President Barack Obama. Honduras’s El Tiempo adds that Honduran officials hoped a full restoration of relations would come out of such a meeting while the Honduran government also is asking the U.S. to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to the nearly 80,000 Honduran immigrants in the U.S. At RNS and RAJ’s new Honduras Culture and Politics blog there’s some analysis about whether or not Lobo has any chance of actually meeting with Obama—an honor, as RAJ writes, which ousted former President Mel Zelaya never was granted. In the end, it would seem that a meeting between Lobo and Obama is unlikely in the near-term, particularly if rumors that the U.S. rejected Lobo’s first choice for ambassador to the US, Roberto Flores Bermúdez, are true. [Flores Bermúdez was originally appointed ambassador to the US by Zelaya but defected to the coup regime camp after June 28. This prompted Zelaya to petition the US to revoke Flores Bermúdez’s diplomatic status, which the US did shortly thereafter]. In the meantime, Pepe Lobo continues advocating for his country’s participation in the upcoming Rio Summit in Cancun while his foreign minister represented the country at a meeting of the Central American Integration System last week in Panama, marking the return of Honduras to that regional body.
This all as internal divisions about the June 28 coup appear to remain quite deep and sensitive. Last week, pro-coup deputies introduced legislation that would officially designate the day of the coup a national holiday called “Protection of Democracy Day.” The bill, says El Tiempo, is being met with opposition by some parliamentarians, as is a separate piece of legislation that would require Honduran schoolchildren to learn about June 28 and the “constitutional” issues of that day. And via RNS and RAJ once again, a fascinating report about how debates over the Honduran constitution are working themselves into the ongoing discussions about the Eduardo Stein-led truth commission, to begin work at the end of this month. From Honduras’s La Prensa last week, word that Human Rights Commissioner Ramón Custodio spoke out against any proposals made by the truth commission regarding constitutional reforms. The pro-coup Custodio went further though, impugning Mr. Stein’s own credibility:
“Mr. Stein has in his background a certain bias for having been part of a commission that declared the Honduran elections illegitimate and insisting that Mr. Zelaya be reinstated as President of the Republic.”
RNS points out that Stein was actually just part of an October Carter Center delegation sent to Honduras to determine whether or not conditions were appropriate for an election to be held. And, RAJ adds that, despite Custodio’s protests, the truth commission (according to Lobo’s presidency minister, María Antonieta Guillén de Bográn) will have authority to suggest “social reforms,” albeit reforms that are “not exactly constitutional ones.” Stay tuned for more as the saga continues…
On to other news:
· Washington Post reporting on Haiti this morning says the Haitian government made an “emotional plea” for more foreign aid Monday while international donors were in the country to discuss what the paper calls “an orderly path to recovery.” The informal conference included representatives from some 20 countries and multilateral organizations (among them Sec. of State Clinton and Canadian PM Stephen Harper) to whom President Rene Preval, in a written communiqué, asked for 36 million emergency food nations and an additional 200,000 tents. The report goes on: “The day-to-day functioning of [the Haitian] government remains disrupted” while the US has apparently offered to lease its abandoned Port-au-Prince embassy to Haiti for $1/year. Other reports say the Canadian government will be building a temporary base for the Haitian government to conduct its daily business, spending as much as $12 million on the structure. Meanwhile, President Preval also did a “rare, exclusive interview” Monday with AP Television. He told reporters that it would take some 3 years to remove all the rubble from his country. Asked about allegations of corruption as aid enters the country, Preval said “It is possible that there have been irregularities,” but was quick to add that, “the [Haitian] government isn't the direct manager of most of this humanitarian assistance.” And, at the Miami Herald, more reports about the beginning of the rainy season. The paper writes, “Four children died and eight were seriously injured Monday after heavy rains triggered mudslides that crashed into a classroom in Haiti's second largest city of Cap-Haitien.”
· From the Financial Times, a report about why Mexico is not among the so-called “BRICs”—a group of “rising powers” that includes Brazil, Russia, India, and China. Columnist Gideon Rachman’s explanation: “the drugs problem is blighting its future.” The possible solution? “Police reform, social programmes and improved intelligence co-operation with the US,” as well as “taking on the legal business cartels” in the country. In particular, Rachman singles out the world’s richest man, Mexico’s Carlos Slim. “Mr Slim is a gifted businessman who has built up a telecommunications empire across Latin America. But his vast wealth testifies to the uncompetitive nature of the Mexican telecoms market in which he built his initial fortune.”
· Mexico is also central to the Institute for Policy Studies’ Manuel Perez-Rocha’s assessment of Obama’s Latin America policy after one year, published at Foreign Policy in Focus. While officials in the Obama Labor Dept. have shown a willingness to work on transnational labor rights issues, Perez-Rocha writes, overall there seems to be few signs of a “fresh approach” to the region. He writes:
“In fact, the Obama administration has continued to espouse President George W. Bush’s Pathways to Prosperity in the Americas. The United States forged this agreement with 13 countries, all of them signatories to U.S. free-trade agreements. The stated goal is to encourage cooperation to “extend the benefits of free trade.” The thinly veiled objective is to commit countries in the hemisphere to the course of corporate-friendly deregulation while driving a wedge between those that have adopted this U.S.-driven approach and those that have been pursuing alternative economic paths.”
· Also, news today that a group of Roman Catholic bishops released a report Monday saying the presence of thousands of troops on the streets and a corrupt judicial system raise human rights concerns in Mexico. The bishops went on to “urge the government to speed up police reforms so that thousands of troops now leading the drug war can return to their barracks. This according to the AP which also reports that Mexico took action against rising complaints that journalists cannot work safely in the country by naming a new special prosecutor for crimes against the media. Gustavo Salas, previously a member of the federal crimes investigation unit, will replace Octavio Orellana, the Mexican Attorney General's Office announced in a statement Monday. The shakeup comes one month after the governmental National Human Rights Commission reported that federal and state authorities have done little to investigate the killings of journalists.
· On the drug war in Colombia, Rory Carroll reports for The Guardian on the failures of the drug war. Among others, Carroll cites Brookings scholar Vanda Felbab-Brown and her new book Shooting Up: Counter-insurgency and the War on Drugs, which argues “eradication campaigns in Afghanistan and Colombia have left drug production unaffected but alienated locals, gifting political capital to insurgents.” Carroll’s recommended course of action: decriminalization of cocaine.
· And finally today, conservative Miami Herald columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner joins his voice with that of the Washington Post in saying OAS Sec. General José Miguel Insulza should not be granted a second term. “The five years he has spent as secretary general are among the worst in the history of that institution,” Montaner argues. As is too often the case, Montaner’s argument is mostly about Hugo Chavez. No mention that the recently elected center-right Sebastian Pinera says he supports Insulza’s bid for a second term as OAS Sec. General. Also, the English-language Santiago Times has taken issue with the Post and others critical of Mr. Insulza in a recent editorial that’s worth a look.
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