By Charles T. Call*

MACCIH and OAS representatives /Flickr / Creative Commons

Halfway through its four-year mandate, the Mission in Support of the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (MACCIH) has scored some important successes but confronts growing sabotage from segments of Honduras’s political elite determined to undermine the Mission’s work.

• After months of negotiation, President Juan Orlando Hernández – under intense political pressure because of his campaign’s role in a scandal involving $330 million stolen from the country’s Institute of Social Security – and OAS Secretary General Luis Almagro agreed to form MACCIH, and the Honduran Congress approved it in April 2016. The broad purpose was “to pursue a comprehensive approach to fighting corruption and impunity in Honduras by strengthening the institutional system and increasing civil society participation.”
• Although inspired by the UN-backed International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), MACCIH was not given the same power as CICIG to “co-prosecute” cases with the Attorney General’s office. In the name of strengthening national institutions, only Honduran prosecutors could indict and prosecute cases.  The OAS’s weakness (compared to the UN) and the configuration of MACCIH – with four in-country coordinators operating under confusing allegiances and with smaller staffs and budgets than CICIG – were also problems.  The organization’s dispersed mandates also detracted from the central outcome desired by the population – corrupt top officials in jail.

Nevertheless, MACCIH got off to a strong, if slow, start.  Just six months after its launching, it contributed to a new “Clean Politics Law” that increased transparency of election financing and created a unit within the Supreme Electoral Tribunal to monitor and report on infractions.  MACCIH also worked with the Inspector General to discontinue the practice of “conciliation” in corruption cases, whereby charges could be reduced or dropped if officials returned the stolen goods.

• The Mission also made headway on high-profile cases that it selected, including the convictions of two ex-Vice Ministers, a Judicial Council magistrate, and nine others. It gained indictments in its two highest-profile cases – against five congressional deputies and against former First Lady Rosa Elena de Lobo.  These cases, and this month’s “Pandora” case implicating several current former legislators and officials, sent a message that top elected officials were not immune from prosecution.  The government’s new Special Prosecutorial Unit against Impunity for Corruption (UFECIC), reporting directly to Attorney-General Óscar Chinchilla, proved an effective partner.

Especially since elections last November – whose process and outcome were widely questioned – the government and political elites have redoubled efforts to clip MACCIH’s wings in multiple underhanded ways.  The Congress has failed to act on important laws and, more blatantly, passed what was dubbed the “Impunity Pact,” which effectively blocked MACCIH’s jurisdiction over congressional misdeeds and postponed any prosecutorial action for misuse of funds until the High Court of Auditors finishes an investigation likely to take three years.

• President Hernández is part of the whole-of-government campaign to undermine MACCIH. For three months, he sat on the nomination of Brazilian former prosecutor Luis Antonio Marrey Guimarães, nominated by the OAS to head MACCIH after Special Representative Jiménez Mayor resigned in February, before approving it this week.  The future of MACCIH was further clouded by a ruling in May by the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court, on a case brought by members of Congress, finding that a 2017 agreement creating UFECIC was unconstitutional.

Given the judicial, legislative, and executive assaults on its powers, MACCIH confronts serious challenges as it commences its third year of operations. Special Representative and Spokesperson, OAS Secretary General Almagro appears reluctant to permit an autonomous head of mission.  Despite declarations of support, the United States and other funders are showing skepticism over MACCIH’s viability, complicating efforts to move forward and recruit for many key positions.

Most importantly, even if MACCIH survives legal challenges and its powers to investigate congressional corruption are reinstated, its success depends crucially on the Attorney-General selected to succeed Chinchilla, whose five-year term expires in September. Now that the governing party has flexed its muscles in the courts and Congress, the Public Ministry remains one of the very few potential checks on executive power – and central to the success of MACCIH and other anti-corruption efforts.  If the United States and other donors continue to believe that Honduras needs to reduce corruption and give democratic rule a fighting chance, they need to step up their diplomatic support for an independent Attorney-General and functional MACCIH.

 June 21, 2018

* Chuck Call teaches International Peace and Conflict Resolution at American University, where he directs a Center for Latin American & Latino Studies project analyzing MACCIH and anti-corruption efforts in Honduras. A report from that project, launched at a public event in Tegucigalpa on June 21, is available HERE.