El Heraldo reported this evening that the National Congress decided against acting on the proposal for amnesty. Instead it chose to leave it for the next Congress to act, or not. "We felt there needed to be a consensus, and we didn't have time to do that," said PINU Congressman Toribio Aguilera. Ramon Custodio, the human rights commissioner urged that they only take up the question of amnesty after hearing the report of the truth commission.
Porfirio Lobo Sosa, acting on the recommendation of the international community, had urged that this Congress pass an amnesty before he takes office on January 27. While not part of the Tegucigalpa San Jose Accord, an amnesty was one of the original conditions of the San Jose Accord.
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3 comments:
This might actually be a smart move. One of the major reasons that the international community would reject the validity of an amnesty would be that it's granted by the perpetrators to the perpetrators. By leaving it to the next Congress, they have marginally increased the chances it will be accepted.
I'm sure this was accidental.
--Charles
I remain unconvinced that the majority of the supporters of the coup want an amnesty: they see it as aimed at helping President Zelaya, and some of them really do believe they did nothing for which they need an amnesty.
So yes, I think that bit of cleansing of the stench of complicity is accidental...
Actually, it is the international community that wanted the amnesty sooner rather than later. Zelaya and Micheletti negotiated it out of the Accord. There are large public sectors against an amnesty, including both the resistance and the UCD. I think they tabled it because they didn't have the votes to pass it. To vote against passing it would have had more serious consequences and now the responsibility for it rests in the hands of the Nationalists. Lobo knows he needs this to restart international aid.
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