•  tegucigalpa
• Tuesday, October 04, 2011
• Inter Press Service

Prominent academics and activists say one of the main pending challenges in Honduras is a resumption of the demilitarisation of the country and the strengthening of civilian control over defence policy that was brought to an abrupt halt by the June 2009 coup d'etat.

The effects of the june 2009 ouster of president Manuel Zelaya by a military commando that flew him — still in his pyjamas — to Costa Rica were so profound that 'the military believe that the country is at their service, rather than the other way around,' former defence minister Edmundo Orellana told IPS.

'Since the coup, we have returned to an ignominious past, and we have seen former members of the military, who still have strong ties to the armed forces, taking over key enterprises and institutions that had been removed from their control. This highlights the weight of Honduras' militaristic past,' said Orellana, who is also a former attorney general.

Orellana, who was defence minister under Zelaya (2006-2009), had resigned a week before the coup because of discrepancies over the growing public presence and visibility that the president was actually giving the military.

He also disagreed with the government's determination to hold a non-binding referendum on establishing a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution, even though the courts had declared the vote illegal. (The attempt to go ahead with the referendum precipitated the coup.)

The former minister, along with a number of academics and civil society organisations, is drafting proposed constitutional reforms aimed at eliminating the military tutelage enshrined in the constitution, and at bringing about changes in society's relations with the military.

The project, 'Fortalecimiento de la conducción civil de la defensa y del control civil sobre las Fuerzas Armadas' (Strengthening civilian leadership in defence and civilian control over the armed forces), is led by the Honduran Documentation Centre (CEDOH).

The head of the think tank, Víctor Meza, says the Jun. 28, 2009 institutional collapse 'obliges us to tackle these issues with a deeper look, to help us build a more viable and democratic model with respect to the military.'

Meza told IPS that the slate of proposed reforms is the product of a consensus reached over the last four months in intense debates among different academic groups and civilian institutions which discussed aspects related to the demilitarisation of the state, the political system, and the role of political arbiter enjoyed by the Honduran military.

Sociologist Leticia Salomón, an expert on military and security issues, said the main challenge is the demilitarisation of the country. Civilians 'have not concerned themselves with questions of defence, but now they see that the time has come to create a community that exercises oversight, sets forth proposals, and warns about the risks of giving the armed forces more power.'

She said the proposals include the restoration of civilian control over telecommunications and the leadership of other key enterprises and institutions that have once again been put in the hands of retired officers 'whose ties to their military functions have never been severed.'

'The impression, actually, is that (these leadership positions) were their part of the spoils for having participated in the coup, because several of the men heading these institutions played a direct role in the rupture of the constitutional order,' Salomón told IPS, citing the case of retired general Romeo Vásquez, who heads the state telecom operator Hondutel.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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