Mass Popular Demonstration Supports Honduran President's Work
Mass demonstration August 29, 2023
in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, in support of President Xiomara
Castro.
The situation in Honduras continues to be delicate in terms of destabilizing maneuvers by the right wing to overthrow President Xiomara Castro. Any excuse is good for this, from minor issues to those that really impact sectors linked to the oligarchy and the relationship with the United States. Now, the discussion has heated up because of the selection of the Attorney General and his deputy. To talk about all of this, we interviewed Gilberto Ríos, a leader of the Libre Party.
Gilberto Ríos: We are in the middle of a battle here that the people have undertaken to change all the stagnant structures of power. It began with the election of Xiomara in November 2021 and has continued with two important appointments, one for the Supreme Court of Justice, which created tremendous tension in the country, and left us in a very precarious situation. But at least we were able to fill the presidency of the Supreme Court, with lawyers who are not even close to the de facto powers of the country, but who have been decent lawyers, especially the one who is now the president of the Supreme Court of Justice, who has no links with these dark sectors.
On the other hand, there is now another important matter, which we knew was going to generate controversy, the selection of the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General, who head the Public Ministry, the prosecutorial function of the state, which has been paralyzed for the last years, especially during the narco-dictatorship, because they became its accomplices. Up to now we have had an Attorney General, Oscar Chinchilla, who has been complicit with drug trafficking and organized crime, guilty of all the illegal and unconstitutional acts committed during the narco-dictatorship. It seems to us that he is the last remnant of the National Party that governed after the coup d'état, someone who has generated a lot of tension because what he guarantees to the ruling elite of the country is impunity.
Once Oscar Chinchilla is out of office, obviously a lot of investigations will begin that will put the Honduran elite before the courts, under different conditions this time and where there is a different correlation of forces. Knowing this, they have been trying to boycott the process. That is why President Xiomara called on the people to gather in Tegucigalpa, the capital of Honduras, a few days ago. There we had a demonstration of close to one hundred thousand members of our party. We see overwhelmingly that there is massive popular support to finally get rid of this institution of the narco-dictatorship. The tension is being created precisely by these power groups for the purpose of continuing to discredit the government of President Xiomara and to generate an atmosphere of instability in the country.
Resumen Latinoamericano: You, from the Libre Party presented two candidates for the selection of prosecutors and the National Party presented two others. It is noteworthy that one of the candidates is on both lists. How do you explain this?
GR: Well, there was a process involving the Proponent Body, which is a legal entity, mandated in law. It is made up of the Supreme Court of Justice, the universities, sectors of civil society and other institutions that have to do with justice in the country, there are seven in total. It proposes a number of resumes – a list of the best ones submitted by independent lawyers – to the National Congress, where they are evaluated from a technical, academic and professional point of view. This list of 21 professionals was reduced to a short list of five persons, and those five candidates who have a high qualifications are evaluated by the Congress. In fact, it is not a partisan proposal but a professional technical proposal, but when they were investigated it was found some of those lawyers do have a party affiliation, perhaps not very public, but that is not part of the discussion.
What we are looking for is a proven professional capable of directing the Public Prosecutor's Office, but who can also serve as a deputy prosecutor, who has important functions according to the rules of that institution. And that in due time, he/she could also replace the Attorney General.
Among these proposals we have found some candidates more suitable than others, and in the case of one in particular there is agreement among several parties that he can play an impartial role. The discussion is still open, that is why there is agreement on this proposal. I had a conversation a few days ago with the vice president of the National Congress, Carlos Zelaya, brother of former president Zelaya, and he told me about there being some common ground on the first vote. Another verifiable fact is that all the political forces have formed an alliance to stop the Libre Party from taking action in the National Congress. It has a partial majority, that is to say, we have a majority of fifty deputies but to get something approval by simple majority requires a half plus one, that is to say, 65 deputies, as half of 128 is 64. That is how decisions are taken on an ordinary basis in the National Congress, but for decisions needing a qualified majority it is 86 votes. This forces us to seek consensus, to be in discussion, and above all to keep the discussion going in order to try to reach an agreement.
RL: What are the other issues that are pushing the Honduran right wing to the brink of a nervous breakdown, which could lead them to instigate a destabilization plan?
GR: That is a very good question because in the last few months there have been three issues that have generated a lot of tension. The first was the tributary justice law, presented in the first quarter of this year. There was a very strong reaction from the ultra-right, because it would force them, especially the country's economic elite, to pay taxes. And here there is interesting data; first, the country has more than 300,000 businesses, of which one per cent, that is to say 3,500 of them, are listed in tax relief registries, supposedly to promote investment. Of these 3,500 there are 140 companies that have abused this tax exemption regime, even producing some types of goods and selling them on the black market in the country without paying any taxes. For example, the importers of fuel for the production of energy, who although they were exempted to import fuel, were actually importing fuel and then reselling it, which represented a major fraud against the Honduran treasury.
These 140 companies belong to the country's economic elite. There are five families that control almost 90 per cent of the economic life of Honduras. Between the period of 2009, i.e. since the coup d'état, with changes made to the law on tax exemptions, until 2011, they managed to evade more than 487 billion lempiras, equivalent to 19 billion dollars. This is not a trivial amount, especially considering that the foreign debt is 20 billion dollars. Basically, the same amount that this economic elite of the country enjoyed in tax breaks. So, the reform of this law generated tremendous controversy and all the media corporations, of which they are also the owners, had a huge campaign. This has also always been backed by [U.S.] Ambassador Laura Dogu, who, as we will remember, was the same one who organized the coup d'état against Zelaya and the attempted coup d'état against Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega on April 18, 2018. By the way, this U.S. hawk who was also in charge of the green zone in Iraq had already retired.
Basically, Honduras is a U.S. colony, and we are in a process of national liberation at the moment. It is an important country for the gringos especially because it is a country with three land borders – with Guatemala, Nicaragua and El Salvador -- and nine maritime borders. We have maritime borders even with Colombia and we are the closest country geographically to Cuba. So, all these characteristics have always made the U.S. very interested in our country. But as well, their companies, and some of their capital, is nvolved in these tax exemptions, so they are also affected and it has made them extremely active. That is with respect to the tax relief law, which is really a rather small reform, but one that affects the interests of the economic elite.
The other was our accession to the Andean Development Corporation (CAF), which deprived them of an important financial market, of that 20 billion dollar debt that we have as a country. Almost 10 billion of it is with domestic private banks, and the rest with the four most well-known financial organizations in the region, which are the World Bank, the [International ] Monetary Fund, the Central American Bank for Economic Integration and the Inter-American Development Bank. When we looked for another international financial offer we found the CAF, and that obviously affects the interests of the economic elite of the country and the U.S. because we would not be buying debt from their banks, and therefore would be paying interest to someone else. And this has also given rise to a big battle in the media of lies, attacks on the CAF and on the President.
Finally, there are two other similar issues. One is the relationship with China, which began with the President's visit on July 6. We saw the reaction of the [U.S.] embassy and the national economic elite as an adverse one, because they see China as a threat that could displace them. The other is the coming of the National Commission against Impunity, which is a mechanism the people have been demanding for seven years from the United Nations, so that they can intervene and bring some justice to the country.
So, all these elements combined have put the Honduran right wing and its allies, especially the U.S., against the government of President Xiomara, provoking political destabilization, a lot of disinformation in the media and threats to democracy. Even by characters such as Romeo Vásquez Velázquez, the general who carried out the coup d'état against President Zelaya, other generals of his rank, and other characters that we know as the main spokespersons of the coup d'état in 2009.
RL: Concluding the interview, we want to tell you that we were covering the mobilization you carried out the other day, and it was good to see the Honduran people, especially the humble people. The photos that were published are really moving, especially because they show the support that Xiomara continues to have among the population who have been hardest hit by the crisis.
GR: Yes, we have enormous satisfaction because at the first call of the President, those free people who organized themselves in resistance, and who have been acquiring a great political conscience, are still active. I must tell you that, with the big media campaign, a person can even doubt whether what they are doing is right or wrong. Because if you turn on a national radio station that defends those interests, you can hear up to 16 scathing reports against the president and the whole government administration that would even make one have doubts. But afterwards, when you see the response of the population, especially of the people who have been with us from the beginning and who have been joining this process, it brings satisfaction. Indeed, the most humble people, peasants, farmers, people who come from the interior of the country, came to the march in the capital of their own free will and supported the President. When we talk to them in the streets, we see that they have been following the government's activities with alternative sources of information. Now we have the advantage of alternative media and social networks. We are also taking advantage of this technological and communicational revolution.
Yes, there is political consciousness, there is a political identification generated by the resistance and then with the Libre Party that is unwavering and has an iron will for change. Seeing 100,000 people in the capital was extraordinary, it was morale-boosting. Very inspiring. We have a people who are willing to fight, in spite of the fact that the institutions are designed to prevent transformations and above all to protect capital. I believe that the humanity comes from the people in the streets and that is our possibility, as a South American theoretician put it, to dismantle those institutions through a great mobilization, and to build new institutions that genuinely serve the interests of the people.
(Carlos Aznárez,, Sept 7, 2023. Photos: Kawsachan News, Honduras Now. Slightly edited for translation, grammar and style by TML.)
This article was published in
Volume 53
Number 11 - November 2023
Article Link:
https://cpcml.ca/Tmlm2023/Articles/M5301113.HTM
Website: www.cpcml.ca Email: editor@cpcml.ca