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This is a week that deserves to be memorialized with fireworks, streams of water being blasted into the air with colored lights played on the jets (a Chicago invention), a parade down the main street of the city, with marching bands, skimpy-clad drum majorettes, a calliope being played by a guy with a golf-ball for a nose, green hair, and ticker-tape and confetti coming out of the tall buildings in a volume that makes memories of the Boston Blizzard (1951) pale by comparison. And anything else that fits into this general theme. Obviously, I don't want the celebration to get out of hand. So what's all the commotion about? Gather around and I'll tell you all about it. This is my day of "vindication" - and I think it deserves observation. Four years ago, I began making a fuss about the bad joke that poses as legal processes in Honduras. During this time, I have written articles, letters, complaints, inquiries and shameless supplications to politicians, courts, newspapers, magazines, T-V and radio stations, both domestically and abroad. My messages have never varied much. I told everyone who would listen, that Honduras was operated by a gang of crooks hiding behind legal immunity, and claims of national sovereignty that they use as their license to do anything that attracts their criminal inclinations . These screeds got me some very interesting responses, among which I found agreement, disagreement, death threats, carefully drafted threats of litigation, etc., etc., etc. But through it all, I never wavered in my conviction that Honduras stands as "the most corrupt nation in the western hemisphere" There were a few individuals who endorsed my position with loud enthusiasm, and others who, while hesitating to speak out, let their silence constitute a discrete signal of their support for me and the charges I was leveling. Still others favored me with a range of softly-stated or iron-fisted letters, the burden of which averaged out to, "you hate Honduras, and are just trying to embarrass it, because some crooks stole your land. Why don't you be a good sport, accept your losses like a nice guy, and shut up? You're giving Honduras courts and real estate developers a bad name" But silent acceptance of judicial abuse is not a program that fits my style. So I persisted with my endeavors to make the Honduran total lack of law and commercial virtue a matter of contemporary knowledge around the world. Even when Presidente Carlos Roberto Flores affixed his signature to the Anti-Corruption Convention earlier this year, thus making Honduras the seventh nation to promise conformity to that landmark document, I was - and still remain - not much impressed. Honduras has preferred doing business "under the table", rather than "on top of it" for a long, long time. Old habits die hard, and especially so when they are as deeply ingrained as corruption is ingrained in the Honduras political system. My principal tool for publicizing corrupt practices in Honduras was/is this WebSite, upon which I have paraded names, dates, and commercial outrages in an unbroken string. An audience for this Site began to build - slowly at first and then more rapidly. It is fair to say that, at this writing, my WebSite: <http://www.goodfelloweb.com/lorenzo/> attracts a global audience. This broad appeal is no accident. Among the offerings therein, I have included a variety of articles containing Honduras survival information, entertaining articles, stories, etc., to "keep them coming back," as Sally Rand used to say in her Chicago hey-days. Through it all, however, a dark thread of political and judicial corruption provides the main theme. This level of verbal warfare can be sustained for a few months, fueled purely by personal outrage, but to keep the fires burning for almost four years calls for unusual devotion to one's objectives. In the meantime, I am sure my persistence has occasionally weighed heavily on the patience of even my most loyal supporters. But I wouldn't give up. Then, on the 22nd of September - last Tuesday, to be precise - a powerful ally joined my one-man anvil-chorus. So, like I said, this is "Vindication Week". It never occurred to me that Honduras qualified as a world-class nesting-place for commercial corruption. Hemispheric, yes. But global? It didn't seem possible to me, in spite of the plethora of evidence I have in my files and have published, to document its commercial and judicial sins. But it now appears that I was much too eager to give Honduras the benefit of all doubts. It was, on the 22nd of September, 1998, while I held steadfastly to the conviction that Honduras was/is the "most corrupt nation in the western hemisphere", that a professional organization, the "Internet Center for Corruption Research", a joint effort of "Transparency International" and Goettingen University (Germany), weighed in with its "Corruption Perception" rating for eighty-four exporting nations - world-wide. On the basis of this organization's professional evaluation, Honduras is not just a hemispheric contender for the dubious honor of "most corrupt". As reflected in their official standings, Honduras (rated at No. 83), is only saved from being perceived as the "most corrupt nation on earth", by Paraguay (#84) and, dead last, Cameroon (#85). Transparency International is a hi-tech of child of cyber-communications. It would never have been formed, and could not exist without the speed-of-light, pan-global, low-cost or no-cost communications highway provided by Internet and the World Wide Web. With an Internet connection, everyone with a computer and even the most modest interest in the topic of corruption can become a potential "whistle-blower" in his or her own immediate area. This adds up to an "intelligence" organization unequalled in the entire history of structured investigative organizations. A great many well-informed people are betting that corrupt politicians can not survive under this searching light of international observation and reporting. Official estimates place the full costs of political and commercial corruption, fraud, illegal rebating, pre-arranged inflated pricing, and "blind" participants in government contracts, in the trillions of dollars annually. If improved reporting and publicizing of this tremendous overburden on world commerce can be reduced by just one-half, the positive impact on legitimate business in the world's markets will be reflected in dramatic improvements in the living standards of the most economically disadvantaged - and corruption-victimized - nations on the planet. So now it’s up to Honduras to confront the paradox that marks its national image throughout the world. Honduras affirmation and its seal on the International Anti-Corruption Convention, and steadfast pretensions to the status of a law-abiding nation is no longer good enough. To enjoy a good reputation in the company of honest nations must be earned by respectable behavior. Nothing less will suffice. The ranking of Honduras, as the third most corrupt nation on this planet is a mark of shame that no amount of self-serving claims and special pleadings to the contrary can alter. Only a thoroughgoing reformation in both political ethics and judicial /commercial practices can renovate the international reputation of the Republic of Honduras. This national reformation will not be easily accomplished but the alternative is impossible: No nation can hope to survive and prosper under such a public cloud of international distrust. With the advent of a global "rating system", as that now afforded by the "International Transparency" organization, national honesty is not only the best policy, it is the only policy under which a small and capital-dependent nation like Honduras can survive. ========== E N D =========== Lorenzo Dee Belveal, Author
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