Retired general who ordered Zelaya’s ouster named director of HONDUTEL
- Romeo Vasquez Velasquez — Revistazo photo
[Translation of an article from Revistazo.com of Honduras for March 9]
The former head of the Honduran armed forces, Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, who ordered the arrest and expulsion of former president Manuel Zelaya last June 28, has been named as the new director of the Honduran telecommunications firm HONDUTEL.
HONDUTEL is one of the Honduran institutions most often accused of corruption. It will now be managed by a personality who will go down in history as the former head of the armed forces who odered the arrest and expulsion from Honduras of a president, thus making himself a participant in the most intense political crisis Hondurans have lived through.
The governing board of the Empresa Nacional de Telecomunicaciones, which was responsible for appointing Vásquez, is composed of Minister of Finance Willaim Chon Wong, Minister of Justice and the Interior Africo Madrid, Minister of the Economy Óscar Escalante and Commissioners Juan Carlos García and Roberto Ramón Castillo.
The retired soldier and now director of HONDUTEL told the press that he will conduct an evaluation of the entity he now heads to determine its strengths and weaknesses.
Vásquez Velásquez was recently exonerated after the high command of the military had been charged with abuse of authority in connection with the ouster of President Zelaya in June, 2009.
The former military commander had been relieved of duty recently by the president of Honduras, Porfirio Lobo Sosa. It was said that the decision to do so resulted from pressure by the international communuity, although he is now in charge of a state institution many have made into their personal dominions.
[Translator’s note: Before the coup, rightist opponents of Manuel Zelaya blamed his government for corruption in HONDUTEL and afterwards cited it as justification for the coup.]
Tags: coup, Honduras, HONDUTEL, Manuel Zelaya, Porfirio Lobo, Vasquez Velasquez