By RAJ
Honduras Culture and Politics
Friday, Apr 23, 2010
As we previously noted,
supporters of the government of Porfirio Lobo Sosa and the government
itself are desperate to find any indication of "recognition" that they
can. So pro-coup Honduran news media claimed that Nicaraguan President
Daniel Ortega had "recognized" Honduras by signing an accord to
reauthorize a border dispute commission.
Now, Danilo Valladares writing for IPS notes that Nicaragua officially disclaimed such an interpretation:
In
a statement issued by Managua after their meeting, representatives of
leftist parties, including the governing Sandinista National Liberation
Front (FSLN) headed by Ortega, said they had decided "not to recognise
the de facto government of Honduras." The IPS article also includes comments from Ángel
Edmundo Orellana Mercado, who resigned his post in the Zelaya cabinet
days before the coup, then refused to participate in the post-coup
Congress in protest against its illegal actions on June 28. Orellana
was the author of a series of important editorials contesting the
innovative attempts by the de facto regime to retroactively cleanse the
coup of the stain of illegality.
IPS notes that Orellana argued
against too-easy agreement to reintegrate Honduras in regional
organizations like SICA and the OAS. Commenting on the Truth
Commission set up by the Lobo Sosa government as part of its attempt to
gain re-admission into OAS, Orellana said
"A
bad precedent could be set if the commitments outlined there are not
fulfilled and everything that happened is simply pardoned".
This
is, of course, precisely what has been set in motion by the Honduran
Congress passing a decree granting amnesty for "political crimes",
which has been criticized by legal experts.
The
IPS story repeats the claim seen in most recent articles that only 30
countries world-wide have recognized the Honduran government. This is
far less than the number of countries claimed by the Lobo Sosa administration.
Among
the Central American countries, as it properly points out, only
Nicaragua has so far refused to recognize Lobo Sosa's government. The
newly elected president of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, has gone even
further than Oscar Arias, saying
"We
will be advocating, as we have up to now, the full and total
reincorporation of our beloved sister republic of Honduras in all of
the region's bodies".
Mauricio Funes, president of El Salvador, is reported to have stated that "Honduras will be fully integrated in SICA" by its scheduled July 20 meeting.
Renzo Rosal, described as assistant director of the Central American Institute for Political Studies, is quoted in the IPS article as saying that before Honduras is re-admitted to SICA,
"Issues
that should be discussed are the role of the Honduran army in a
democratic society; the historical two-party system in Honduras; the
reconstruction of the social fabric; and the role that the OAS and SICA
should play to help solve conflicts like the one in Honduras".
That
would seem a very ambitious agenda to complete before July 20. Notably,
it is not within the charge of the Truth Commission, which has been
explicitly warned off such fundamental areas of Honduran political life.
The closest approximation to this agenda is, in fact, the manifesto
issued by the Frente Popular de Resistencia following the meeting it
convened in La Esperanza earlier this spring, which also called for
reconsidering the role of the army, the
place of the historical two party system, and the reconstruction of the
social fabric. Good ideas; maybe someone should invite the authors to
the table for real dialogue.
Honduras Culture and Politics
Print This
|