Citizens’ initiative to repeal Employment Zones in Honduras submitted to Parliament

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The National Anti-Corruption Council (CNA) on Monday delivered to the Honduran Parliament a citizens’ initiative supported by thousands of people, including opposition deputies, seeking to repeal Employment and Development Zones (ZEDEs).

The proposal received 15,190 signatures, more than the 3,000 required by law, said Odir Fernandez, director of the CNA’s Investigation and Case Monitoring Unit.

“We are submitting the citizens’ initiative to repeal the ZEDE law, it comes with 15,190 signatures and fingerprints collected nationwide,” Fernandez explained.

The petition was handed over by representatives of the CNA to opposition deputies Doris Gutiérrez and Mauricio Villeda in a ceremony outside the National Congress in downtown Tegucigalpa.

Dozens of people, mostly carrying white banners with the message “NOZEDER,” joined a motorcade that left from the ANC headquarters and headed toward Parliament, where they chanted slogans against the ZEDE.

Some of the citizens wore white shirts and repudiated the security measures around the Parliament, with police officers equipped with rubber batons and tear gas bombs.

UNCONSTITUTIONAL REGULATIONS

The ZEDEs were passed in 2013 during the government of president Porfirio Lobo and according to their proponents are development zones similar to Hong Kong or Singapore.

Fernandez said that the anti-corruption office and citizens who signed the proposal expect “results” from the Legislature of the 9.5 million-strong nation, 70% of whom are poor.

The Employment Zone law is alleged to be an “unconstitutional regulation, it was born from the reform of entrenched clauses (those considered unchangeable) of the Constitution of the Republic and ultimately we cannot sell or yield our sovereignty,” he emphasized.

He pointed out that the Employment Zones will have their own legal regulations, so extradition provisions may become ineffective and “benefit many people,” some of whom involved in illegal deeds.

These zones will be “a State within a State, the municipalities and local governments lose their jurisdiction in these zones, we will no longer have 298 municipalities, there are many more as ZEDEs are added,” Fernandez pointed out.

He emphasized that the citizens’ initiative will serve as “a gauge to fully expose all deputies of the National Congress who were not in favor of this regulation, so that they may be punished in November,” when the country will hold general elections.

Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández has repeatedly advocated the Employment Zones and assures that they will create thousands of jobs.

He has also rejected that the ZEDEs will serve as a way for investors to evade their tax obligations or become shelters for people refusing to face justice.

By a majority vote, the Supreme Court of Justice in mid-June approved the establishment of a special jurisdiction that gives the go-ahead to the Employment Zones in the Central American country.