Next for Honduras: "charter city" neocolonialism?
Submitted by Bill Weinberg on Sat, 06/09/2012 - 21:01 Central America Theater
A startling article in the New York Times May 8 noted that Honduras in late 2010 passed a constitutional amendment drawn up by the administration of President Porfirio Lobo that allows the creation of a separately ruled "Special Development Region" within the country—where the national state would have limited, if any, authority. The article, entitled "Who Wants to Buy Honduras?," portrays a vision for privately run islands of order and security amid the squalor and violence of the impecunious Central American country. This was apparently the brainchild of a young Lobo aide, Octavio Rubén Sánchez Barrientos, who was taken with the ideas of US economist Paul Romer, theorist of "economic zones founded on the land of poor countries but governed with the legal and political system of, often, rich ones."
Citing accounts in the Honduran press, the Honduras Culture and Politics blog notes that the new measure gives "the government the right to expropriate any contiguous region of land for the use of 'Special Administrative Regions' which will be owned in full by the government, but have their own fully autonomous court system, not answerable to the Supreme Court."
More:
http://ww4report.com/node/11150
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Partitioning Honduras: The advent of charter cities
A proposal to build 'quasi-independent city-states' appears to be an affront to democracy and civic life.
Last Modified: 14 Jul 2012 19:50
At the end of 2011, an article appeared in The Economist proclaiming "an ambitious development project aim[ing] to pull a Central American nation out of its economic misery".
The project in question: Charter cities. The nation: Honduras.
The article explains:
"In a nutshell, the Honduran government wants to create what amounts to internal start-ups - quasi-independent city-states that begin with a clean slate and are then overseen by outside experts. They will have their own government, write their own laws, manage their own currency and, eventually, hold their own elections."
The term "eventually" should raise some warning flags. According to US economist Paul Romer, whose brainchild the charter city concept is, the apparent affront to democracy is not actually problematic because the cities will be inhabited entirely by migrants who have taken up residence of their own volition. The Economist offers an analogy:
"Migration to Britain gives the legal system there legitimacy in the eyes of those who move there, even if they cannot vote. If the English legal system were enforced on the same person in his home country, Mr Romer notes, that would be colonial rule."
More:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/07/2012711121224166933.html
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Honduran charter cities trample on democracy
By Suzy Dean
The Foreign Desk
Monday, 16 January 2012 at 4:32 pm
A worrying development in Honduras echoes anti-democratic trends in Italy and Greece, whereby technocracy is usurping popular rule.
Honduras has long been one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere. A year ago, the National Party, with support from the opposition Liberal Party, decided to form the Región Especial de Desarrollo (RED), or Special Development Region. These would encourage domestic and foreign investment, and in turn jobs, homes and an environment in which the public will be able to enjoy a better standard of living.
Last month, President Lobo of Honduras established a Transparency Commission of five experts and “influential supporters in the broad community of people concerned with economic development”. This Commission will act as the guardian body of the proposed new cities, and is tasked primarily with establishing a procedure for receiving and reviewing development proposals from would-be investors, as well as ensuring that business dealings related to the RED remain open, competitive, and free of corruption.
What sets the REDs apart from other charter cities is the belief that in order for the cities to thrive they must suspend democracy. The unelected Commission will govern the new city, until they decide the population is ‘ready’ for democracy; only then will new local councils be set up. The logic goes that if a city can be built in an economically underdeveloped country, but with highly-developed rules and governance, then citizens can then choose to live there – and live better for opting to do so. So goes the thesis of Paul Romer, economist and architect of RED.
More:
http://blogs.independent.co.uk/2012/01/16/honduran-charter-cities-trample-on-democracy/
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