"In order to understand the project and our role in it more clearly, it is helpful to start with a more accurate understanding of the origins of the project. Most existing media accounts are misleading.Almost a decade ago, a team of brilliant young attorneys, led by Octavio Sanchez, began working on reforms to promote economic development during the Maduro administration. Those reforms included an attempt to reform the property title system. In addition Sanchez promoted a successful introduction of telecom reforms that allowed competing providers to compete with the state telecom monopoly. Mark Klugmann, an American with more than a decade of experience advising Latin American governments on reforms, was a key outside advisor in designing the successful telecom reform. Both reforms were championed by Pepe Lobo, who was serving as the President of Congress at the time.Klugmann had earlier seen in Chile how powerful interests prevented important reforms from being implemented. He had designed the telecom strategy as a pilot test for a more general concept: Create zones with their own legal systems that would not threaten powerful interests and yet which would allow important reforms to be piloted that would have been impossible otherwise. Sanchez remembered how back in 1992 the government of Honduras worked with, the now extinct, American company "Bethlehem Steel Inc." to try to create a special reform zone (very similar to a RED) in Honduras to house a large shipbuilding yard which would also serve as a city for migrants from Hong Kong fearing the forthcoming change in regime.Sanchez and Klugmann began regular conversations about how to create zones with their own legal system as a means of bypassing the special interests that typically block fundamental reforms. But their ideas were too radical at the time. In particular, outsourcing the judicial system was unthinkable.While out of power in the Zelaya administration, Lobo, Sanchez and Klugmann continued to discuss the Zone concept and how they might implement it. During this period Sanchez wrote a scholarly paper that explained how the Latin American judicial system was an obstacle to economic development due to antiquated procedures and attitudes towards the law. In a footnote, he suggested outsourcing the judicial system as a possible solution to this problem:Why can't we hire foreigners to act as our judges? Why can't we create an agency with offices several key developed nations that hire practitioners or law school professors to act as ad-hoc judges to decide certain cases for us?Because CAFTA had allowed multinationals operating in Honduras to adjudicate their disputes in U.S. courts, after CAFTA the concept of outsourcing the judicial function had become slightly less avant garde. Sanchez and his colleagues also developed a proposal they called "Proyecto 1825," which proposed the radical decentralization in Honduran government activity.Thus for almost a decade before the passing of the RED legislation, Klugmann and Sanchez had been discussing "the Zone." The zone was originally designed to be a legal reform zone (or, in Klugmann's terminology, a Legal, Economic, Administrative, and Political Zone, a "LEAP zone").Paul Romer's 2009 TED talk on Charter Cities was perceived to be a high profile source of external validation that could help push their zone idea through Congress. It proved to be a very effective marketing catalyst.The RED legislation was primarily crafted by Sanchez and his team with the help of Klugmann. Because the RED concept is frequently confused with the "Charter City" concept, it is useful to note specific differences. For instance, although the constitutional statute authorizing the SDRs allows for some features of the "Charter City" concept, such as the use of a third-party guarantor state, it does not require those features. Indeed, the Transparency Commission governance structure was specifically designed as a substitute for a third party guarantor country. Instead, it is based on the governance structure of the 1825 Honduran Constitution and the current governance model of Switzerland. By requiring that most jobs (90%) are to be held by Hondurans, the statute is quite distinct from an envisioned "Charter City" based on mass immigration. The RED legislation also does not require a particular RED to be large - indeed, despite the fact that some Hondurans refer to the RED legislation as authorizing "Ciudades Modelos," there is nothing inherent in the RED legislation that requires city-scale development.Kevin Lyons and Michael Strong, founders of Grupo MGK, first met Sanchez and his team July 3 and 4, 2011, while the constitutional statute was still being drafted. At the time, Sanchez was thinking of the project as necessarily large scale: A development on 25-50 square miles of remote land requiring $40-60 billion in infrastructure development. Lyons, Strong, and colleagues made the case that the project was much more likely to succeed if it started smaller, closer to existing urban areas, and then grew in response to demonstrated demand. Sanchez and his team immediately recognized that this approach was similar to their original Zone vision. Grupo MGK founders continued to develop their proposal throughout the remainder of 2011 and 2012 in alignment with the original vision of Sanchez and team, resulting in an MOU signed between Grupo MGK and CoAlianza on Sept. 4, 2012."
Leia mais aqui.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário