Caribbean & Central America - March 2013 (ISSN 1741-4458)

President Porfirio Lobo led a delegation of seven including Foreign Minister Arturo Corrales to Venezuela to attend the state funeral of President Hugo Chávez on 8 March, where he described Chavez as “an extraordinary leader who fought for Latin American unity, social inclusion and social justice”.

Although Chávez was the first to rail loudly against the coup d’état against his Honduran ally President Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) in June 2009, and later vowed not to recognise as legitimate the subsequent November 2009 election in which Lobo came to power, Chávez and his Colombian counterpart Juan Manuel Santos later succeeded where the US had failed in negotiating the ‘Cartagena Agreement’ (May 2011) that allowed for Zelaya’s return from exile and his reincorporation into Honduran political life, effectively drawing a line under the Honduran political crisis. Chávez also offered to re-incorporate Honduras into Venezuela’s regional discount oil scheme, Petrocaribe.

A few days after his return from Venezuela, Lobo called a press conference (11 March) to reiterate that the executive was intent on pushing through a set of ‘democratising’ reforms to the telecommunications law (Ley Marco de Telecomunicaciones). “The telecommunications party in Honduras is going to end, it can’t last forever” he declared, warning that if congress diluted the proposal he would submit it to a national referendum alongside the scheduled general election in November.

The proposed reforms would give the government greater scope to regulate the media and include very broad censorship provisions that go beyond the country’s existing libel/slander laws. The proposals would amend at least 15 articles of the existing law and introduce a national ethics council to oversee the communications sector. The media, which Lobo has attacked directly for its coverage of the country’s security situation, official corruption cases and government policies, fears that the government is set on limiting press freedom and targeting media outlets it doesn’t like.

The draft bill was prepared by the national telecommunications commission (Conatel) and the committee for free expression (C-Libre), an NGO comprising journalists and other sector experts set up in 2001 to promote freedom of expression and press freedom in Honduras. A representative of the Inter-American Press Society (SIP) in Honduras, Rodolfo Dumas, has already expressed scepticism about the new ethics council, warning that, “this type of articles [sic] has to be approached with great caution." The SIP is preparing a report about what it has dubbed a ‘Gag Law’ (Ley Mordaza), making direct comparisons with Venezuela’s 2004 law of social responsibility in radio and television (Resorte, in the Spanish acronym).

The ruling Partido Nacional (PN) has a majority in the national congress and the Lobo executive has typically managed to get its legislation through under the watchful eye of the president of congress, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is also the PN’s 2013 presidential candidate. Both Lobo and Hernández have previously mooted the idea of adding a fourth ballot box to the general election in order to hold a national referendum on key constitutional reforms, potentially including the option of a constituent assembly.

• Lobo praises Chávez

“I met him in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, and when I saw him I had the impression that he was a proper, serious man, and he was jovial, happy, and in the meeting, which lasted three hours, it drew my attention, his treatment of people, to the girls serving the meal he said to them all, “how are you?, how is your family”[…]he was very friendly and very close to people”, President Lobo told the Honduran daily El Heraldo in Caracas, Venezuela on 8 March.

• Castellanos feted in the US

Julieta Castellanos, the rector of the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH), received one of the ‘International Women of Courage’ awards given by the US state department every year to mark International Women’s Day (8 March). Castellanos received her award from the US secretary of state John Kerry and First Lady Michelle Obama. Castellanos, who was a member of the national truth and reconciliation commission in Honduras in 2010/2011, has latterly become a crusader for police reform in the country, after her student son and his friend were murdered by renegade officers in November 2011. Castellanos last year dubbed Honduras a failing state because of the lack of justice and the widespread impunity in the country.