Caribbean & Central America - February 2011 (ISSN 1741-4458)

On 10 February the Truth Commission (CVR) which is investigating the circumstances of the coup d'état against former President Manuel Zelaya in June 2009, said that it was close to concluding its report, even though it has yet to talk to some of the main protagonists. Zelaya himself refuses to talk to the CVR because he says it has no standing (as it was set up by his elected successor, Porfirio Lobo).

The chairman of the Commission is Guatemala's former vice president and foreign minister, Eduardo Stein. It started work on 4 May 2010. The other members are: a Peruvian judge, Marí­a Amadilia Zavala Valladares; a Canadian diplomat, Michael Kergin; the head of the national university, Julieta Castellanos; and one of her predecessors, Jorge Omar Casco.

On 9 February the CVR interviewed the former president of Costa Rica, Oscar Arias, who was intimately involved in trying to find a compromise which might have led to Zelaya's return to office (if not power) immediately after the coup. Stein said that Arias's testimony provided verifiable evidence that “there were major breaks in the legislation (i.e. the Honduran constitution) during the period of crisis in Honduras. In this context, it is possible that people will be upset by our conclusions."

The big question is whether the “people upset" will be Zelaya supporters; partisans of the group, led by Roberto Micheletti, that overthrew him; or even Lobo himself. Stein also said that Arias had made some suggestions about what should go into the CVR's report which will be published at the end of March.

According to Stein, Arias welcomed the CVR's work and said that it was right for the Honduran people to understand the background to the events of 28 June 2009 so that similar crises could be averted in the future. According to Stein, Arias also criticised those governments, led by Brazil, which still refuse to recognise Porfirio Lobo as rightful president of Honduras.

Separately, José Miguel Insulza, the Secretary General of the Organization of American States (OAS), another prominent figure who is also due to give evidence to the CVR, reiterated that he wants Honduras to recover its full membership of the OAS because Lobo should be rewarded for his good faith. However, Insulza doubted that if the issue came to a vote (perhaps at the forthcoming OAS meeting in El Salvador at the beginning of June), Honduras would be readmitted to the OAS. He noted that two-thirds of the OAS's 35 members would need to vote in favour of ending Honduras's suspension but doubted that 24 OAS members would vote accordingly.

It does seem, however, that South American hostility towards the current Honduran regime is on the wane. It is worth noting that in early February Ecuador sent its national football team to Honduras for a friendly international. Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa, was one of the strongest supporters of suspending Honduras from the OAS after the coup.

Lobo's reform effort: On 2 February, President Lobo met the 15 members of the country's supreme court (CSJ) in a bid to dispel concerns about the confrontational relationship between the executive and the judiciary. Lobo said his intention was to convince the court to drop its pending criminal charges against Zelaya. On 14 February President Lobo said that the government would not add further charges to the ones Zelaya already faces. This means that Zelaya now faces one charge of corruption (involving L$57m or US$3m) over misuse of funds for advertising. The CSJ, which opposed and still opposes Zelaya, will appoint the judge for this case. First, however, the judge will have to establish that there is a case to answer and that a crime has been committed by Zelaya.

• Remittances

In January 2011 the inflow of remittances to Honduras jumped by 14.8% year-on-year to US$210m. In 2010 remittances came to US$2.53bn, up 5.3% on 2009. In 2009 remittances were 11.2% down on 2008, thanks to the economic crisis in the US which badly affected the 1m Hondurans working there.