US demanding clean-up
US PRESIDENT Joe Biden wants three Central American countries to crack down on corruption as part of a plan to spend billions of dollars in the region to stem illegal migration.
Yet accusations of graft and authoritarianism dog some of very leaders Biden must work with in Central America, feeding concerns about their desire to clean up government.
Since taking office in January, Biden’s administration has pledged to set up a regional task force to fight graft, and threatened to freeze US bank accounts of corrupt officials in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, three countries known as the Northern Triangle that account for much of undocumented immigration to the US.
With apprehensions at the US-Mexican border at their highest level in two decades, Biden is pursuing a $4 billion (R56bn) plan in Central America.
Washington regards graft and poor governance, alongside poverty and violence, as key factors behind Central American emigration, and is worried that any US financial aid for the region could fall prey to corruption.
The Biden administration is urging the region’s governments to meet targets on combating corruption, to support judicial and electoral independence, and to protect human rights, a US State Department official told Reuters.
Leaders in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador need to oversee “systemic change”, the official said.
“We’re not going to be able to have a close partnership with governments that are not committed to working against corruption,” said Brendan O’Brien, acting head at the US Embassy in San Salvador.
The region’s record on corruption is patchy. Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez is himself under investigation by US prosecutors for alleged links to drug cartels.
His brother was sentenced to life in prison for narcotics trafficking by a US court last month.
To many in Washington, Honduras is the main worry in Central America. Elections to replace Hernandez are due in November but several of the front runners have already been embroiled in corruption probes.
In El Salvador, the growing concentration of power by President Nayib Bukele, who last year sent troops into the national parliament to pressure lawmakers into approving law and order legislation, also unsettles US officials.
Bukele has criticised Biden’s plans as a rehash of the Obama-era Alliance for Prosperity, a regional economic development scheme, which he said failed to yield results.
In Guatemala, President Alejandro Giammattei raised alarms in Washington by appointing his lawyer to sit on the country’s highest tribunal, the Constitutional Court.
And on Tuesday, Guatemala’s Congress refused to swear in a renowned anti-graft campaigner as the new president of the court.
“It’s going to be difficult for the Biden administration to find reliable allies among Central American governments,” said Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin American Affairs, a human rights advocacy group. Publicly, the three governments have pledged to eradicate graft. Hernandez’s cabinet chief Carlos Madero said Honduras was committed to tackling corruption and would remain a reliable partner for Washington in counter-narcotics.
Guatemala’s presidency said combating corruption was a top priority.
El Salvador’s government has promised to clean up public life, launching an internationally backed anti-graft commission in 2019.
But with the Biden administration planning to increase aid to the region and US lawmakers wary about wasting taxpayers’ money, Washington will not cut “a blank cheque” to its governments, a senior US official.
US officials say Central American countries should support a regionally backed and independent anti-corruption commission, similar to ones established in Guatemala and Honduras that were shuttered in 2019 and last year.