Tag Archives: Llorens

Wikileaked cable reveals USA ignorant

The USAmerican ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, wrote a cable on June 19, 9 days before the president of the country, Manuel Zelaya, was arrested by the military on orders of the Supreme Court, reports Le Monde. There had been rumors of a military coup, but on that morning he had breakfast with the head of the military General Romeo Vazquez Velasquez, and the head of the army, General Miguel Garcia Padgett, who both assured him that the military would not depose the president to install a junta. They said it was just a rumor circulated behind closed doors to put pressure on the politicians. The ambassador also reported that they would not act without the knowledge of the US, and concluded that the military “do not have the least intention to attack the legitimate government” (reverse translated from French).

When the president was arrested by the military at dawn on June 28, Llorens – one might guess from his cable communication – did not know that the Supreme Court had issued an arrest warrant for the president. Based on this previous communication, one may therefore suspect that the ambassador felt betrayed, thinking that they had done a coup d’État nine days after promising that they would not do it, not knowing or understanding that in spite of it appearing to be a coup, it was not a coup.

However, there is a problem with this interpretation: A persistent rumor that Llorens knew about the arrest order in advance. From the cables it appears he did not.

There is one way in which these different facts can be reconciled. The generals did not, in Llorens’s words as translated by Le Monde, say that they necessarily would inform him personally. Just his country. There is a US air base in Honduras, and Marines train there. Given the close contacts it is beyond likely that at least some of them would have known. Thus, the generals did not lie to the ambassador.

Furthermore, the military of Honduras never attacked “the legitimate government”, the legitimate government being the Congress and the Supreme Court. Furthermore, they did not “attack” the president, they arrested him on orders of the Supreme Court (and then they set him free abroad rather than hold him). So the generals kept their word quite literally on that point, too.

What should be of concern, though, is the ambassador’s words that Zelaya is not an ideologue, thinking that USA can manipulate him. That is either ignorant, or misleading. Zelaya was bought by South American interests, most likely Hugo Chávez, already in his election campaign. This bribery continued with the so-called ALBA “loans”, in a process that in most every country would have made the president guilty of high treason. Furthermore, he said explicitly that he obeyed Chávez second only to God (“Después de Dios, ¡Chávez!”). If Llorens was ignorant about this, it is not good. If he is protecting Zelaya (or someone else), it is even less good.

Having seen now what Chávez did once his democratic cover was blown, introducing a full-blown dictatorship by similar methods as Hitler once did, I don’t think anybody can argue that the defense of democracy in Honduras was too rash, too determined. It was appropriate. Unfortunately Venezuela is in a different position, the judiciary already having been completely compromised, and the legislative as well, so a repeat is not possible. The best hope for Venezuela is a popular uprising and that the security forces remain passive while the people throw out the dictator quite literally.

USA warned Zelaya dangerous for democracy a year before he tried to overthrow the constitution

In a cable written by former US ambassador to Honduras, Charles Ford, to his successor Hugo Llorens, on May 15, 2008, Ford warns Llorens about Honduras’ president Manuel Zelaya in no uncertain terms.

The cable represents a staunch warning of an imminent threat to democracy in a country that traditionally had been a close ally to the USA.

Ford’s account reflects getting to know the Honduran president during two and a half years of sometimes rather close contacts. It led Ford to conclude that Zelaya is “almost a caricature of a land-owner ‘caudillo’ in terms of his leadership style and tone,” a ‘caudillo’ being akin to a dictator.

The ambassador’s description of the president is blunt: “Zelaya’s principal goal in office is to enrich himself and his family while leaving a public legacy as a martyr who tried to do good but was thwarted at every turn by powerful, unnamed interests” (the emphasis is mine). He hammers home this assessment by immediately adding that Zelaya ”would be quite comfortable as a martyr who tried but failed honorably in his attempt to seek out social justice for the poor.”

Ford finishes the summary of the cable by warning of the anti-democratic tendencies: ”[Zelaya] resents the very existence of the Congress, the Attorney General and Supreme Court. Over his two and a half years in office, he has become increasingly surrounded by those involved in organized crime activities” (again, my emphasis).

The cable ends on a rather pessimistic note: “I believe we can engage Zelaya intensely in the hope of so as to minimizing damage to Honduran democracy and the economy.”

With the benefit of hindsight, Charles Ford’s warning appears to have been prophetic. Manuel Zelaya tried to hold a referendum in 2009, aimed at establishing a “constituting constitutional assembly.” Since it would have implied to overthrow the constitution of Honduras, it was declared illegal and ordered stopped by the Supreme Court (see video account of events, and an analysis I made in April 2010).

As Zelaya ignored the court and persisted with the plans for a referendum on June 28, 2009, he was arrested by the military at dawn, on an arrest order from the Supreme Court. However, due to the military illegally exiling him the act was deemed a coup d’état by other countries, in spite of the Congress in Honduras voting by a large majority to replace Zelaya by the person who was next in the succession line, Roberto Micheletti. This decision was later upheld by Congress, again by a very large vote margin. After Zelaya’s deposal the attorney general filed charges for a number of large corruption scandals, also involving a person mentioned by Ford in this cable.

Today Zelaya is living in exile in the Dominican Republic, refusing to return to his home country to face corruption charges. Just as Ford predicted in the leaked cable, Zelaya has become a martyr for the poor and those who consider his deposal a coup d’état.

It is noteworthy that the cable that Hugo Llorens sent home July 24, 2009, after Zelaya’s deposal, ignores completely what happened before June 28. The only reference to it is by saying that there was “near unanimity among the institutions of the state and the political class that Zelaya had abused his powers in violation of the Constitution” while at the same time saying that the violation was “not proven”.

This is disingenuous, since Zelaya had violated a direct court order, failing to take the required act within the deadline given (i.e., submit a report indicating obedience of a ruling, by June 25). The prosecutor thus had due cause to ask the court for an arrest warrant for the president, and the Supreme Court had the legal authority to issue that arrest warrant, as they did on June 26. Yet none of this is even mentioned by Hugo Llorens.

In combination, these two cables from Tegucigalpa released so far by Wikileaks, raise questions regarding the role of ambassador Llorens in Zelaya’s attempt to overthrow the constitution of the Republic of Honduras. The fact that Llorens and Zelaya knew each other from previous dealings in the 1990’s has been brought up before. This is something that the US Congress can look into, and I predict they will, once the Republicans take over the House next year. Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, from Miami, has made herself known as a strong supporter of the defenders of democracy in Honduras, and she will take over the chairmanship of the foreign affairs committee. So I expect action, and that the truth will win in the end.

Llorens misled Washington: Wikileaks

Through a Wikileaks leaked U.S. diplomatic telegram (backup link using the IP number) from Tegucigalpa on July 23, 2009, we now know what the ambassador, Hugo Llorens, reported home regarding what he considered a coup.

First he reports the facts as he saw them. I note that he left out the fact that the Supreme Court had ordered president Zelaya to stop his activities with the referendum that he had planned for June 28th, and to report how he had obeyed the order no later than June 25th (see point 6). The president’s failure to submit that report on June 25th constituted a prima facie failure to obey the order. Llorens was thus wrong as regards the facts when he wrote to Washington that Zelaya’s breaking the law was “alleged but not proven”.

Whereas Llorens reported that it was just suspected that Zelaya might violate the court order by holding the referendum on June 28, he was in fact already in defiance of a court order by not submitting the report. The court case had played out, which Llorens either missed or chose to omit.

Regarding the arrest order for the president, he is implicitly dismissing it, by saying that the military does not have the authority to carry out judicial orders. He does not say whether he thinks that it was issued on the date that appears on it, or after the fact with a false date; he just says that they don’t have the authority, and that they did not act as if executing a judicial order of arrest on the morning of June 28th.

In his comments, Llorens speculates that they fell back to the old-fashioned ways of dealing with an unwanted president when the democratic institutions seemed unable to come up with a way to deal with the situation. He also expresses the hope that the prosecution of the militaries may open the door for a way out of the conflict. As we know, they were prosecuted in January, 2010, but it didn’t change the game – probably for coming way too late, and for the militaries to be let off the hook way to easy.

There is of course no arguing that the handling of the matter was poor. Llorens himself admits that they probably had due cause for the arrest and prosecution of the president (something that the U.S. did not admit publicly), so one cannot but be angry at the incompetence of those who deposed Zelaya. However, that incompetence in the execution can not justify Zelaya’s crimes, or render them null and void. Each crime must be handled independently by the courts.

The bottom line is that Hugo Llorens misled Washington, to the detriment of Honduras, but to the benefit of Zelaya. However, what is most misleading is the omission of any mentioning of Llorens’s own participation.

When reading the telegram one gets the image that Llorens tried to figure out what happened post facto. The truth is, though, that Hugo Llorens very much was a participant in the events that culminated June 28th. He participated in several meetings the week before, according to my sources who were in those same meetings. However, he does not pretend to know anything about that in this telegram. It definitely leaves me with a feeling that he was being disingenuous to his own boss. (In early July he was suspected of having alerted Zelaya about the legal proceedings against him, and his imminent arrest; this cable mentions neither any legal proceedings nor his knowing about them.)

Zelaya & Llorens: Partners in Crime?

The other day a sub-committee in the US Congress had a hearing about Honduras. Among the things brought up were some economical affairs including a settlement in a USAmerican court granting a USAmerican company $51M in compensation from the Republic of Honduras. They insisted that Honduras deal with this. (See p 2 ff in transcript.)

Honduras has now started to do so. It turns out the money was awarded in a settlement, the legitimacy of which under Honduran law is questionable. In fact, they are investigating at present if the persons involved at the institution in question, FHIS, are guilty of corruption for the way in which they possibly misrepresented their country. The disputed contract dealt with reconstruction after hurricane Mitch, which hit in 1998.

This reminded me of a story that went around the blogosphere last summer. Manuel Zelaya was from 1994 the director of FHIS, and at that time he dealt with Hugo Llorens, the present USAmerican ambassador to Honduras. A corruption scandal was also implied.

Could it be that these two stories are linked? Could it be that Llorens is now running Honduras as a USAmerican viceroy just so that they can complete the corruption and bring the money home? Is Barack Obama a pawn in a banana-republic corruption scandal?

If he is not, or does not wish to be, he should fire that Llorens figure faster than quick. He seems dirtier than the lahar that leveled two towns in Nicaragua during Mitch.

On the other hand, Hugo Llorens was the principal advisor to the US President and National Security Advisor on issues pertaining to Venezuela during the failed coup against Hugo Chávez in 2002, and the US was the only country to side with the coupsters. What’s the deal with this Llorens, does he have no moral compass, or does he just dislike presidents who share his name? Or was Zelaya intended as a double agent in ALBA? Does he in reality work for CIA? Myself I don’t believe in ideology as a driving force for these men. No, personal crass economic self-interest makes a more compelling argument in my opinion. Corruption, in other words. Either that, or stupidity. But time will tell, time will tell.

USA-imperialismen i Latinamerika fortsätter

Härom dagen kallade USAs ambassadör i Honduras, Hugo Llorens, till sig ledarna för det Liberala Partiet. Omedelbart därefter sa Roberto Micheletti upp sig som partiledare [Rättelse: Ledningen röstade att avsätta Micheletti med endast 3 röster mot, och en nerlagd, enligt senare uppgifter]. Enligt min källa är alla utom 3 eller 4 i ledningen nu inne på att Manuel Zelaya skall komma tillbaka till Honduras, få alla anklagelser om korruption avskrivna, och återuppta sitt politiska engagemang som partiledare trots att han försökt begå en statskupp. Men å andra sidan, Hugo Chavez i Venezuela och Adolf Hitler i Tyskland begick också statskuppförsök, satt i fängelse för dem, men återvände sedan till att väljas till ledare för sina respektive länder (där de helt förutsägbart sedan förstörde demokratin). Så det finns ju prejudikat.

Men varför i böveln reser inte vänstern sig som en man och protesterar mot denna USA-imperialism, att blanda sig i hur ett politiskt parti i ett annat land väljer sina ledare? Har vänstern gått och blivit cynisk nu när USA går deras ärende? Har de ingen etisk och moralisk kompass? Är de lika korrupta som fascisterna?

US Ambassador Pressured to Change Honduras Democratic Constitution

According to Honduras minister of the presidency, Rafael Pineda Ponce, the US ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, put pressure on the country to go ahead with the illegal referendum aiming at an unconstitutional rewriting of the constitution. He did this at a meeting at the US embassy in which Pineda Ponce participated around June 24, a few days before Zelaya was removed from office by order of the Supreme Court for his role in violating the constitution.

Llorens allegedly questioned why they do not agree to changing the constitution, and the Hondurans replied that they are all in favor of improving the constitution, but that it has to be done in the manner prescribed in the constitution itself.

In my opinion, Llorens seems to have been seeking a way out of the crisis by talking to the side that, according to him, appeared to have the less strong argument. However, if he had bothered to read the constitution he would have found that he was wasting his time, and that he would have been much better off trying to dissuade Zelaya from violating the constitution.

Unfortunately, it seems that after 80 days he still has not found the time to read Honduras’ constitution.