Effort to Annul Impunity Law in Uruguay Fails

I’ll be off next week on vacation so no posting. Back after Memorial Day. Thanks for reading. JFS

After 15 hours of debate, Uruguayan lawmakers voted at 5:30am this morning to keep the so-called “Ley de Caducidad” on the books. Uruguay’s El País has the first coverage of this morning’s vote against the nullification of the 1986 impunity law, reporting that 99 members of the lower house were present for the final vote which ended in a 49 to 49 tie. Deputy Victor Semproni, a member of the governing Frente Amplio coalition which had pressed for the annulment of the amnesty legislation, was the only lawmaker to abstain.

Last weekend, Frente Amplio party members agreed they would support a legislative vote against the 1986 law, despite the fact that Uruguayans voters had twice affirmed their desire to keep the impunity law on the books through referendums and despite significant tensions over the measure among sectors of the Broad Front.

All opposition party deputies voted against nullification. As El País notes, Uruguay’s chamber of deputies had approved annulment of the Ley de Caducidad last October before hitting a stumbling block in the Senate. This time the obstacle was reversed as the Senate approved annulment by one vote in mid-April.

In a press release this morning, Amnesty International says Uruguay has “missed a historic opportunity in the pursuit of justice for victims of human rights abuses committed during military rule by failing to overturn a controversial law that blocked prosecution of security officials accused of violations.” Guadelupe Marengo, Deputy Director of the Americas programme at Amnesty International, adds that “A chance to turn a very difficult page by removing a norm that in practice put those responsible for human rights violations above the legal system…has slipped through the hands of the Uruguayans.”

Today’s bullet points:

· All ten referendum questions put forward toe voters two weeks and supported by Ecuadorean Rafael Correa appear to have been approved. The final vote tallies still require a stamp of approval from the country’s electoral council, according to the BBC, and the opposition will have the opportunity to challenge the results, should they desire. However, the preliminary results show the “Yes” vote gathering between 44.96% and 50.46%. The “No” vote received between 39.25% and 42.56%. Full results on each referendum question at the CNE’s site here.

· In Colombia, AP has more on the Colombian Supreme Court’s decision Wednesday to dismiss evidence from the Raul Reyes laptops, allegedly recovered by the Colombian military after a cross-border bombing raid against the late FARC leader’s camp in neighboring Ecuador in 2008. The wire says cases against at least 15 people suspected of aiding a guerrilla group are in the process of “unraveling” because of Wednesday’s decision. The first such case was one against ex-lawmaker Wilson Borja. Borja tells TeleSur Thursday he could pursue a counter-suit against former President Alvaro Uribe for accusing him of aiding the FARC, based on evidence from the computers. Meanwhile, former Colombian senator Piedad Cordoba says she is considering a bid to regain her seat in the Colombian Senate after the Wednesday’s dismissal. Cordoba was banned from the Senate in November 2010 for allegedly “collaborating with and promoting” the guerrilla group. Cordoba has long denied those charges and Colombia Reports says her defense “could now rest upon how much of [Inspector General] Alejandro Ordoñez's evidence against her was contained in the FARC computer files.” Ordoñez says he will call for a review of this week’s Supreme Court ruling. According Supreme Court President Camilo Humberto Tarquino, evidence from the computers was dismissed because the documents were picked up in the neighboring country by the military, rather than by the judicial police. He adds the decision is not a statement one way or the other on the “validity” of the documents, but rather addresses their (in)admissibility in a court of law.

· Also on Colombia, the Panamanian government says it will not extradite former Colombian spy chief Maria del Pilar Hurtado back to Colombia. On Wednesday, Attorney General Viviane Morales officially requested that Ms. Hurtado be arrested for her role in the DAS wiretapping scandal. She sought asylum in Panama in late 2010 and will apparently be keeping it. BBC Mundo reports.

· Latin American News Dispatch reports on the life for one-time FARC guerrillas in Colombia who have since demobilized.

· AP reports on the murder of Honduran television station owner Luis Mendoza in the city of Danli this week. Mendoza is the 13^th media worker to have been killed in the last year. The Honduras Human Rights blog, meanwhile, highlights the killing of another peasant activist in Honduras’s Aguán region. Forty-five year old Sixto Ramos, a member of campesino cooperative Nueva Suyapa, was shot and killed on May 18. Two other members of the campesino movement were killed one week prior while a fourth individual disappeared over the weekend.

· Also, on Honduras, former president Mel Zelaya says he plans to return home on MAY 28. FNRP leader Juan Barahona says Zelaya will return from the DR with former members of his government and will be accompanied by Venezuela’s foreign minister, Nicolas Maduro. AP reports while CEPR’s Alex Main has an excellent recap of recent Venezuela-Colombian mediation in Honduras.

· Mel Zelaya was in Nicaragua this week for the annual Forum of Sao Paulo gathering which continues to bring together over left-wing parties from around the region and beyond. Nicaragua’s Confidencial reports on day one of the meetings at which the issue of Honduras took center stage.

· John Perry at the London Review of Books blog writes critically on the “Honduras: Open for Business” conference held recently in San Pedro Sula, as well as Pepe Lobo’s “Charter Cities” experiment.

· Guatemala’s Prensa Libre reports on a meeting of Central American leaders yesterday in Antigua to further define a regional strategy against organized crime. Central American countries plan to seek international financing for the regional project in the coming months.

· Spain’s El País looks at Keiko Fujimori’s “mano dura” citizen security plan to fight “common crime” in Peru. As the paper is the latest to highlight, Fujimori is now being advised by former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani, who currently runs his own a private security consulting firm.

· And finally, on US policy toward the region. The New York Times ran a short report yesterday on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s apparently new desire to “improve ties” with Latin America. On Wednesday the Secretary hosted a private dinner with the former presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Peru, Panama and El Salvador. Over two years into the job Brookings Institutions’ Ted Piccone, an organizer of Wednesday dinner, said Clinton is now thinking about the “kind of legacy she’s aiming to leave” in the region. The first sign of what direction the administration will move over the next two years is likely to come through the selection of a new assistant secretary of state to replace Arturo Valenzuela. The names being floated thus far, like former US ambassador to Colombia and current assistant secretary for international narcotics and law enforcement (INL), Bill Brownfield, suggest the nomination will come from inside the administration. Andres Oppenheimer comments in the Miami Herald.