Recent News on Honduras Accord and Elections

You will find almost nothing of this detail in any of the mass media. In fact the most you are likely to find anywhere is just a bald byte that the Honduran Congress says no to the re-instatement of Zelaya. Actually what they did was to pass a motion that again ratified the transition to the govt. of Micheletti. So in effect they have used the Accord brokered by the US to legitimise the coup government. Rather surprisingly the US actually objects and even maintains that Zelaya is the legitimate president. However, they will no doubt do nothing to upset the status quo in which the coup continues and again a unity govt. will be formed without the participation of Zelaya. Perhaps the US hopes to rope Zelaya in to some other face saving farce that will provide a fig leaf for the recognition of the coup government. This material is from this site.


Thursday, December 3, 2009
"Disappointing" vote by Congress "broke" Accord
The Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord committed both the faction of Roberto Micheletti and the legally elected president of Honduras, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, to a series of steps that, as has been noted at length here and elsewhere, was fatally flawed by the lack of a sufficiently clear timeline and an undefined mechanism for the formation of the expected "unity" government.

The US government, after it committed itself to recognizing the outcome of the election whether or not Zelaya was restored by the proposed vote in the Honduran Congress, has been held awkwardly to the transparent fiction that the Accord never was intended to imply a vote on Zelaya's restitution had to take place before the elections.

So immediately after the election, the Honduran Congress chose, for whatever reason, not to vote on a straight motion whether or not to restore President Zelaya, but rather, decided to turn the clock back to June 28 and re-enact the passage of the decree through which they claimed to install Roberto Micheletti as replacement president.

Where does that leave things?

Speaking for the US, Arturo Valenzuela said

We're disappointed by this decision since the United States had hoped that Congress would have approved [Zelaya's] return.
He also, remarkably, reiterated that the US continues

to accept President Zelaya as the democratically elected and legitimate leader of Honduras
and that

the status quo remains unacceptable.
In response to questioning after Valenzuela's statement, unnamed Senior Administration Officials expanded on this theme, noting that the November 29 voting

we have always felt, was an important step to the solution of the problems of Honduras, but not a sufficient one, because the restoration of the democratic and constitutional order had to go by additional measures... [emphasis added]

These "additional measures" explicitly included

this vote that the Congress was supposed to take on the restoration of Zelaya...[emphasis added]

Translation: the US expected a different vote than the one they got. What kind of vote? well, I am glad you asked:

That's why we were disappointed. And the fact that the Congress, in fact, did not vote President Zelaya back into office...
And about the unacceptable status quo, the same unnamed officials said

the absence of democratic and constitutional order is the unacceptable status quo
and

we continue to accept President Zelaya as the democratically elected president of Honduras.
For his part, Ricardo Lagos, the former Chilean president who had the bad experience of being part of the all-too-briefly functional "verification" commission, went further. As reported in El Universal of Venezuela, speaking on CNN En Español Lagos said

the refusal of the Honduran Congress to restore the overthrown president Manuel Zelaya "breaks" the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord and will make international recognition "more difficult"
Lagos puts the blame for the breaking of the accord squarely on the de facto regime and the Honduran Congress:

The decision "finishes breaking the accord between the (interim) government and Zelaya..it began to be broken [when] one of the parties thought that he could constitute [the unity government]" in a unilateral form...in reference to the regime of Roberto Micheletti.
Most important, in this interview, Lagos said that

in his reading, the vote on the part of Congress about the situation of Zelaya foressen in the Tegucigalpa Accord carried "implicitly" an "elegant form to restore" the overthrown official.
Or to put it another way: Lagos, like most readers, thought the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord called for a vote on restoring Zelaya as a way to give Congress a face-saving means to redress their original actions.

So, the US and Lagos are in harmony and both consider what the Congress did an unfortunate, even disappointing, waste of the opportunity provided in the Accord. Right?

Well, not so fast. The US manages to add yet another twist to its already contorted position. Valenzuela added to the remarks quoted above the qualification that

the decision taken by Congress, which it carried out in an open and transparent manner, was in accordance with its mandate in Article 5 of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.
Let us pause to think about the implications here.

The US does not recognize the coup of June 28 as legitimate, and continues to consider Manuel Zelaya the only legitimate president of Honduras (while looking wistfully ahead to the end of January and a new inauguration as their new solution).

Yet the framework now transparently identifiable as forged by the US-- despite the thin veil of Costa Rican mediation cast over it by the use of Oscar Arias as a conduit-- has had one real result: it gave the Honduran legislature a chance to reaffirm the very same unconstitutional actions whose outcoes the US says it still does not recognize.

Quite a powerful tool, that Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord: it apparently cleanses constitutional rupture and makes it something the international community has to accept-- because it was transparent.

But then, so were the events of June 28. They were transparently a coup d'etat.

Yet, the US argues that the exact same decree that was illegitimate on June 28 is legitimate in December because it was enacted in response to the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.

What a powerful thing that Accord turned out to be: it supercedes the Constitution of Honduras and whitewashes a universally condemned coup.
Posted by RAJ at 7:55 PM 10 comments Links to this post
Labels: Arturo Valenzuela, Congreso Nacional, Honduras coup, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, Ricardo Lagos, Tegucigalpa/San Jose Accord

Brazil, Venezuela condemn Honduras vote result.

No doubt many other countries will for the time being also refuse to recognise the result. The Honduran Congress is to consider today whether to re-instate Zelaya a part of the deal brokered by the US. But the deal is already dead and I expect that the Congress will follow the line of the Supreme Court and consider the reinstatement illegal. It really makes little difference since Zelaya said he would not agree to be reinstated at this stage. But one never knows, perhaps Zelaya might agree that some symbolic move is the best available to him now. However, Micheletti has won it would seem and probably sees no need to accomodate anyone. The US is on his side and that is all that matters over the longer run. This is from presstv.


Brazil, Venezuela condemn Honduras vote result



Brazil and Venezuela have condemned the result of the Honduran presidential election after a military coup ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said on Sunday that failure to oppose the move could encourage other adventurers to stage coups in Latin America.

"If the countries that can ... make gestures do not do so, we do not know where else there could be a coup," Lula said.

Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said earlier on Thursday that Brazil would not recognize the disputed election as that would be paramount to legitimizing the coup.

Meanwhile, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a close ally of Zelaya, called the vote an 'electoral farce'.

Zelaya has been residing at the Brazilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa since his return to the country from exile in September.

The ousted leader told his supporters to boycott the election and said the winner would not be a true president.

"He is going to be a very weak leader without recognition from the people and most countries," Zelaya told Reuters.

During the election on Sunday, police fired tear gas and used water cannons on Zelaya's supporters, wounding some and arresting many others. Angry protesters rejected the election result, claiming that about 75 percent of the electorate failed to participate in the vote.

Honduras' conservative opposition National Party said on Sunday that its candidate Porfirio Lobo won the election.

Blog report from Honduras

This is a report from someone in Honduras looking at events from the viewpoint of a supporter of the opposition to the coup. We will get quite different accounts from the mainstream media who have not been following events for the most part. Now the elections have been held with limited disruption and there will be vastly different claims about the turnout! However, the restrictions on campaigning and the law against recommending a boycott will not be mentioned nor the fact that not only the independent candidate for president withdrew but many others running for other positions. However, with the US accepting the results and some its allies, things will return to normal, and the repression of opposition groups can continue with continued lack of coverage by mainstream media. After all, it was not Ahmadinejad who was elected but a wealthy conservative rancher who will not betray his own class or the US investors in Honduras. Repression under those auspices is simply normal.


Honduras: everything is fine, haven't you heard?
posted by Tyler Shipley -It was a relatively quiet day in Tegucigalpa. Terror will do that.

Oh, there were people in the streets – protestors filled the square in front of the Congreso, for the 103rd consecutive day. Organizers in the Frente Popular de Resistencia met to determine what they would do about the pending pantomime elections. Leaders of the five main human rights groups in Honduras delivered an official denunciation of the coup elections to the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE). The Movimiento de Mujares Visitacion Padilla, a feminist organization associated with the Resistance, amassed a crowd of many dozens of courageous women to demonstrate outside a police station where one of their leaders had been detained overnight.

Merlin Equiqure, one of the founders of a feminist movement that has been on the front lines of the coup resistance in spite of a powerfully patriarchal social structure, remains under arrest tonight without the possibility of bail - why? Because she was caught with a can of spray paint. The paint was used – as photo evidence has clearly demonstrated – to decorate placards and props for a piece of street theatre the group put together for the international day against violence against women. Her organization, in collaboration with the growing feminist movement in Honduras, has been tirelessly denouncing the fact that women have been particularly victimized under the coup regime – a pamphlet from a related organization wrote, “we are victims of sexual abuse, they beat our breasts, hips, buttocks and vulva; they put batons in our crotch, they threaten us with rape and other types of sexual aggression in a clear demonstration of contempt of this society towards the body and the integrity of women.” Merlin’s group, named after a famous woman who struggled for women’s rights in the 1920s, is made up of over 6000 predominantly young women – some of the women I spoke to this morning were teenagers - demonstrating courage I could never dream of exhibiting myself. In a piece of tragic absurdity that brought me to tears, one of their community leaders is now facing a trumped up prison sentence where she will likely face the very same sexualized violence that she has been so tirelessly fought to expose and denounce.

But women’s bodies are not only being used by the golpistas as objects for desecration and humiliation in prison cells; they are simultaneously being used to woo the smug gringos who have breezed into town to ‘supervise’ the farce elections this weekend. A cocktail party was held this evening at the Mayan Hotel for the representatives of NDI and IRI (elections-observation organizations linked to the Democratic and Republican parties in the US, respectively) and other observers cobbled together from the far-reaches of the Latin American Right (including Armando Calderon Sol, former president of El Salvador.) As they toasted to the great strides that Honduras was making towards a stronger democratic republic, they were entertained by 14- and 15-year old Mayan girls, dancing in sexualized traditional dresses, much to the delight of the overwhelmingly male ‘champions of democracy.’

I suppose it is possible that the American elections observers believe that this farce is a legitimate election. If the individual I spoke to two days ago was any indication, they clearly have very little knowledge of Honduran history; normally, at this point in an election campaign, there truly would be a ‘fiesta.’ Supporters of the two primary parties would be waving red or blue flags, encouraging people to support their candidate, and arguing in taxis over who was best suited to run the country. This year, the flag vendors walking from car-to-car are ignored. This afternoon, Pepe Lobo, the election frontrunner, held a rally in the Colonia Kennedy and paid people 200 lempiras each to attend. Even with the financial incentive, it was a feeble rally. Perhaps it is because, as a taxi driver explained to me this morning, “in July, they were paying people 500 lempiras to attend the white marches. Then they dropped it to 300 and now it is 200. I can make more driving my taxi.”

In front of the Congreso, the daily protests continue but they, too, are smaller than usual. For a movement that once pulled hundreds of thousands of people to its demonstrations - the protests in Tegucigalpa were the largest sustained demonstrations Central America has ever seen - the fact that only a few hundred are still in front of Micheletti’s new office is a sign that the repression is working. If our daily conversations in taxis and stores and street corners are any indication, there are very few people who support the coup outside of those closely connected to the oligarchy, but this is a resistance that is exhausted and unnerved. Leaders keep getting detained or disappeared. Military watch our every move from rooftops. Rumours of tanks mobilizing for the weekend charade are convincing the peaceful and unarmed resistance that the massive marches of the past months may not be viable in this moment.

On a personal note, I find myself increasingly conscious of a certain inevitability about the way things will play out here, in the short term. Barring some unanticipated violent insurrection, Sunday’s pantomime will likely play itself out quietly – the Frente has strongly encouraged people to stay home and stay safe - and one of the oligarchs will be crowned President, albeit with a very low voter turnout. While it is obvious to most people here that the elections are a mockery of democracy and that Honduras has essentially become a dictatorship, it is equally obvious that the United States will recognize the results of this sham as legitimate. On that note, it is truly impossible to adequately describe the level of disrespect and derision with which the NDI and IRI ‘elections observers’ have shown to the people of Honduras.

A small but illustrative example: I stood this afternoon with some of those gringo observers in suits as they walked with their military escort into the TSE building, laughing in mockery at the gathering of the five most prominent human rights organizations in Honduras, whose meeting with TSE officials was delayed by 3 hours in order to accommodate the schedules of the U.S. observers. The observers refused to give interviews, laughed about the value of local money (“how many of these damn things do I need to get a decent cup of coffee”) and ridiculed the Resistance for not understanding that “no matter how it plays on TV, sometimes the bad guy really is the bad guy.”

They were referring, of course, to Manuel Zelaya, holed up in the Brazilian embassy. The fact that they focus the Resistance on him is proof-positive of their profound misunderstanding of the situation. Zelaya is but a figurehead – one who was generally viewed with suspicion and doubt in his three and a half years in office before the coup – for a movement that has its roots in trade unions, women’s organizations, student activism, human rights advocacy, campesino groups, indigenous struggles and countless other grassroots social movements that have been built up over many decades and have come together in the wake of this assault on their already-flawed democratic system.

What neither the arrogant gringos nor the foolish golpistas recognize is that nothing is fine in Honduras. No matter how emphatically Barack Obama can say ‘yes,’ Hondurans have already said ‘no.’ No to sham elections. No to violence against women. No to police and military repression. No to unrelenting poverty. No to North American imperialism and local comprador oligarchs. No to an unfair and easily manipulated constitution. No a la reforma – si a la revolucion. I came to Honduras to experience what seemed like the climax of a story – I have discovered that it is only the beginning of what will likely be a long and hard struggle for true justice, peace and democracy.

>> Tyler Shipley's blog

The Lobo victory in Honduras

Another wealthy rancher is president of Honduras but presumably this one has enough sense not to alienate fellow members of the elite by raising the minimum wage etc. While as the article mentions many countries will still shun Honduras they can rest easy in that the US and its allies do recognise the elections and will soon declare that everything is on the up and up and the aid pipeline will be turned back on and also the military co-operation. The US never did withdraw troops or even its ambassador. The entire negotiations were a complete fraud. The negotiations were supposed to negotiate the return of Zelaya to the presidency but instead they negotiated the Micheletti plan of never allowing him to return and of legitimizing the presidential elections. This is the new smart diplomacy.

Victory declared in Honduras poll
November 30, 2009
By Rory Carroll

• Rancher Porfirio Lobo takes presidential election
• While some party, others vow to fight on for Zelaya

Within hours of the polls closing the celebrations began. Cavalcades of honking cars raced up and down Boulevard Morazan. The Hotel Maya filled with cheering people in blue T-shirts. The media fell into paroxysms of delight.

A wealthy rancher named Porfirio Lobo had just won Honduras's presidential election, heralding a "democratic fiesta". By dawn today the revellers were heading home, perhaps stopping for breakfast at one of Tegucigalpa's myriad Pizza Huts, Burger Kings and Wendy's.

"This is a wonderful day. The country has regained its equilibrium," beamed Ana Gomez, 29. After days of grey skies even the tropical sunshine returned.

But not everyone was minded to party. Honduras is in crisis: internationally isolated, shunned by investors and aid agencies. The president ousted in a June coup, Manuel Zelaya, is besieged in the Brazilian embassy, the compound ringed by barbed wire, police and soldiers. "These elections are illegitimate," he said.

Foreign governments lined up to condemn the vote as a whitewash. Many boycotted it and vowed "continued resistance". The homeless children who sleep on rubbish dumps in Tegucigalpa's slums were too hungry or high on glue to care.

How did it come to this? How did a sleepy central American backwater known for coffee and Maya ruins become a dangerously polarised international pariah?

Miguel Alonzo, sifting through the debris of his office, had an answer. "We are run by an oligarchy, that's how." The root of the crisis, he said, was the fact that an elite made up of little more than 10 families runs Honduras. "They control the economy and they control politics."

On Saturday Alonzo's civic association, Comal, paid the price of backing Zelaya's boycott campaign. Police and soldiers stormed the office and carted away computers, cash and documents. They said they were looking for weapons.

That, and the violent crackdowns on pro-Zelaya rallies, seemed anachronistic. Latin America had supposedly left repression behind in the 1980s and embraced progressive democratic governments.

"Honduras is different!" Roberto Micheletti, the de facto president, boasted last week. He was talking about its defiance of international pressure to restore Zelaya to power, but was right in other ways. From the late 19th century Honduras was turned into a giant banana plantation by US fruit corporations. They dominated the economy and made and broke governments. US marines intervened in central America more than 30 times, and in Honduras seven times, between 1900 and 1934. The US supported friendly despots on and off until 1981, when democracy replaced military rule. Power alternated between the National and Liberal parties, but an Americanised conservative elite pulled the strings.

The 10 most powerful families, many descended from Palestinian and Jewish immigrants, dominate banking, insurance, manufacturing, telecommunications and media, including TV and newspapers.

Half the population of 7.6 million still lives on less than $2 a day. "Hondurans are not being well served by their institutions," Julia Sweig of the Council on Foreign Relations thinktank said with understatement. Slums such as Cementerio, a fetid sprawl of shacks with human scavengers and mangy dogs, resemble a Hogarth sketch. Armed gangs make it one of the deadliest places in Latin America.

Unlike the rest of central America, however, during the cold war no leftist insurgency arose in Honduras, a placidness which neighbours mocked as doziness.

Zelaya changed that. Elected in 2005, he was an improbable revolutionary. A wealthy logger and part of the ruling elite, in 2007 he veered left and embraced Venezuela's socialist president, Hugo Chávez. An ideological conversion or tactical ploy, depending who you ask.

Mel, as he is universally known, lowered school fees and raised the minimum wage. The implementation was clumsy and in some cases backfired, costing jobs, but the poor embraced Zelaya.

The constitution constrained him: to avoid lapsing back into authoritarian rule Honduras limited the executive to one term. It was the "world's worst constitution", according to Costa Rica's president, Óscar Arias. Zelaya tried to change it by holding a non-binding referendum in June. The elite and middle class, already alarmed by the president's leftist shift, revolted. "He was going to perpetuate himself in power, just like Chávez, we had to stop him," said Romero Alguilera, owner of a taxi fleet.

With the blessing of congress, the supreme court and Zelaya's own party, masked soldiers seized and exiled him on 28 June. The world condemned the coup – even the Obama administration, which had no love for a Chávez ally. Governments withdrew ambassadors, aid was frozen and investment evaporated. The de facto rulers seemed unaware that coups were no longer acceptable: the US resisted full-blown sanctions but cut aid and visas for the elite.

The 10 families, with Micheletti as their frontman, fought back. They hired Washington lobbyists to woo Republicans and Democrats. The tactic was to run down the clock until Sunday's election, intended to cement Zelaya's loss of power.

The authorities closed pro-Zelaya media and curbed civil liberties. Security forces snuffed out protests with teargas, clubs and in some cases live rounds, leaving hundreds injured and several dead.

Zelaya sneaked back into the country in September but failed to rally mass support. Local media, controlled by the ruling elite, ran false stories that Cubans, Iranians and Venezuelans were hiding in the Brazilian embassy. One newspaper even reported there were Martians.

"Resistance" rallies dwindled and the ubiquitous grafitti – "Mel is coming!" – looked ever more wishful. As the elections loomed, the White House broke ranks with the region and hinted it would recognise the result, emboldening Costa Rica, Panama, Peru and Colombia to follow suit. Canada and the EU are expected to do the same.

Lobo, the president-elect, ran on a slogan of change, but the well-heeled revellers in the Hotel Maya spoke of equilibrium restored. "Things will get back to normal," smiled Luis Gomez, a business graduate. Honduran normal, that is.

Obama Smart Power strategy legitmized Honduran coup

It is interesting that Costa Rica will recognise the elections a sure sign that Arias immediately gave in to US pressure after having been rebuffed and made to look like a fool by Micheletti and company. Micheletti has managed to outsmart the OAS. In the case of the US it appears the idea was that it should be outsmarted all along since its avowed policy of rejection of the coup was a facade for an actual policy of accomodating the coup government.

Sunday, November 29, 2009
Obama's "Smart Power" Helps Legitimize "Smart Coup" In Honduras?

Henry Kissinger said in the seventies, "if we can't control Latin America, how can we dominate the world?" This imperial vision is more evident today than ever before. Obama's presence in the White House was erroneously viewed by many in the region as a sign of an end to US aggression in the world, and especially here, in Latin America. At least, many believed, Obama would downscale the growing tensions with its neighbors to the south. In fact, he himself, the new president of the United States, made allusion to such changes.

But now, the Obama administration's "Smart Power" strategy has been unmasked. The handshakes, smiles, gifts and promises of "no intervention" and "a new era" made by President Obama himself to leaders of Latin American nations last Spring at the Summit of the Americas meeting in Trinidad have unraveled and turned into cynical gestures of hypocrisy. When Obama came to power, Washington's reputation in the region was at an all-time low. The meager attempts to "change" the North-South relationship in the Americas have made things worse and reaffirmed that Kissinger's vision of control over this region is a state policy, irrespective of party affiliation or public discourse.But the Organization of American States (OAS) and Carter Center, hardly "leftist" entities, have condemned the electoral process as illegitimate and refused to send observers. So has the United Nations and the European Union, as well as UNASUR and ALBA.

Washington stands alone, with its right-wing puppet states in Colombia, Panamá, Perú, Costa Rica and Israel, as the only nations to have publicly indicated recognition of the electoral process in Honduras and the future regime. A high-level State Department official cynically declared to the Washington Post, "What are we going to do, sit for four years and just condemn the coup?" Well, Washington has sat for 50 years and refused to recognize the Cuban government. But that's because the Cuban government is not convenient for Washington. The Honduran dictatorship is.
What we are witnessing is the economic hit men of the West hard at work. This is a battle for the region. The West is trying to bring back, and or hold their grasp on what used to be

The predictable US response to Honduran vote.

There will be inflated reports about turnout and no mention of the withdrawal of the independent candidate. No doubt the Honduran Congress will now be emboldened to not ratify the agreement that would return Zelaya to power. The agreement has long been dead anyway since the Zelaya side interpreted it as involving the Congress voting before the election to restore him and then a unity government would be formed. Micheletti delayed the vote until after the election and had no intention ever of reinstating Zelaya. The US went along with this circus. The US will be able to dragoon a few allies in Latin America to join in recognising the results and over time no doubt others will cave in as well but there will be a lasting rancorous relationship between the US and many Latin American countries at this diplomatic farce on the part of the US. This is from hondurascoup.

Monday, November 30, 2009
State's Rich Fantasy Life
The US State Department has weighed in on the election results in Honduras this morning, and indeed there are no surprises here.



Honduran Election

Ian Kelly
Department Spokesman
Washington, DC
November 29, 2009

We commend the Honduran people for peacefully exercising their democratic right to select their leaders in an electoral process that began over a year ago, well before the June 28 coup d'etat. Turnout appears to have exceeded that of the last presidential election. This shows that given the opportunity to express themselves, the Honduran people have viewed the election as an important part of the solution to the political crisis in their country.


Except that the turnout appears not to have exceeded the turnout in 2005, according to the TSE's own firm hired to make the statistical projections and do exit polling. They report a turnout of 47.6% versus the TSE's claim of a 61.3% turnout. Their report has a 2% confidence interval (accurate at 98% level) whereas the TSE's claim is just an assertion, with no numbers presented to back it up. Both sets of results were presented at the 10 pm TSE press conference, but notice who the State Department decided to listen to.

The Honduran people overwhelmingly expressed themselves. Forced democracy where they could not choose candidates who represented them was not the solution for them. It was status-quo or "no go" and they didn't go in droves, despite the State Department's blind eye. Anyone who thinks the election resolved anything in Honduras is naive.


We look forward to continuing to work with all Hondurans and encourage others in the Americas to follow the lead of the Honduran people in helping advance national reconciliation and the implementation of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord. Significant work remains to be done to restore democratic and constitutional order in Honduras, but today the Honduran people took a necessary and important step forward.
One wonders what fantasy world the State Department lives in that the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord will ever be implemented. I hate to tell you, but its dead. The ink wasn't even dry on the signatures when Thomas Shannon publicly agreed to recognize the results of the elections no matter what, nailing its coffin shut. You've made half-hearted efforts to resurrected it, but you're not Merlin. Its not going to come back to life.

So what's the likely US policy going forward? We've now recognized the sham election where exit polling suggests that fewer than half of the electorate actually participated. If the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord is dead and buried, as I contend, then I can only see the State Department returning to its practical, unprincipled stand, exemplified by Lew Anselem's comments on the elections, and a swift return to the status quo, a complete white-wash and acceptance of a 21rst century coup by our government. What a sad bunch of politicians.
Posted by rns at 6:09 AM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: elections, US State Department
Sunday, November 29, 2009
TSE announces 61.3% Participation; other estimates range lower
(Corrected at 8 AM EST) The Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE) headed by Saul Escobar, reported in national broadcast at 10:00 pm, that turnout was 61.3%. He also reported they had preliminary, unaudited, results, from about 8,600 polling places (out of 15,300), that they had counted 1.7 million votes for all offices so far.

However, these were unaudited results because the system they had set up to verify the numbers transmitted by cell phone, which appears to have been to make a digital recording of the call, failed, so they have not been able to check that the numbers digitized and entered into the vote counting computers matched the numbers called in by the various polling places.

The TSE is spinning this turnout as just what you would expect given the recent trends, which they said was in line with a 6% per election decline in each of the last several elections, even though this is a supposed increase.

Already, La Prensa reports in their Minute by Minute column a turnout of 61.3 % which would be an increase, not a decrease, from the previous election. This would lead one to expect approximately 2.8 million votes.

So, what does this mean in terms of legitimacy of the election and effectiveness of the call for boycott by the Frente de Resistencia? Even by the TSE's numbers, which are unaudited and preliminary, and don't match with press reports, that's a 38.7% abstention rate.

The TSE had hired a polling firm to do exit polling. They presented a report the TSE conference as well. They sampled 1000 polling places (of the 15300) and reported only a 47.6% participation rate (at a 98% confidence level). This report is more in line with what the Frente de Resistencia. The polling firm further reported they saw a 7% decline in voting over 2005. The results reported by the TSE are based on their sample precincts.

Thus we can expect a great deal of interpretation being projected into the void.

El Tiempo, in a story projecting Pepe Lobo as winner, reported that the TSE had counted 570,954 votes from 4159 polling places "selected strategically to have the tendency in all the country". This is a sample of 27.2% of the planned polling places. While it would not scale directly (since other polling places could have larger numbers of voters) it is curious to see 1/3 of the polls yield only 500,000 votes, and still have claims for 62% turnout, which would project 2.8 million votes overall.

This would be implied by the turnout estimate Bloomberg reports, citing TSE magistrate Danny Matamoros (although it is unclear when Matamoros made this statement, whether before the 10 PM announcement over radio that we report on here, or after). Matamoros is widely quoted as claiming long lines of voters led to the indelible ink running out, which makes him seem rather invested in portraying this as a huge electoral turnout. As in most elections, we are likely to need to wait sometime for official figures, and meanwhile, unofficial claims will likely be taken up and repeated as if they were established facts.

The next thing to watch for are reports of the differences between votes cast and valid votes, to detect any effect from deliberate null voting.

For now, if the TSE projection reported at 10 PM can be taken at face value, there was no massive turnout of Honduran voters yearning to use the ballot box to move beyond the coup. At best, there was a continuation of the long-established gradual discouragement of eligible voters about the worth of voting, which we have previously suggested is itself a kind of unorganized protest against elected government.

But it is also reasonable to propose that there was a measurable effect from the campaign to boycott the vote, whether we use Boz's numbers (and say that about 100,000 voters stayed home in protest) or suggest a different target number would have been reasonable in such a politicized election year.

That the results would favor Porfirio Lobo was never in question. The actual numbers are unvailable on the TSE website as of 8 am this morning, and the website for vitural observers that gave access to the cameras, is not broadcasting images of the count.

So much for the TSE's promise that they had a triple backup system that would prevent any delays in delivering the results
RNS and RAJ

Honduran sham election.

This article is interesting in that it not only gives a history of the coup negotiations recently but also notes some of the splits within those who support the coup. The parts about the military are particularly frightening. It remains to be seen if anything such as descrribed really happens. In the US there is virtually no discussion of the issues and the whole Honduran farce is off the radar of mainstream media. The article should have mentioned that the US brokered agreement was quite vague and had no timetable for a decision to be made by congress on Zelaya's re-instatement but of course it was understood that it would be before the formation of a unity government and the the Honduran Congress would simplify ratify the agreement. If it did not do this then the agreement would be null and void. But Micheletti stalled and now the congress will not meet until after the elections and also an opinion has been received from the Supreme Court that Zelaya cannot be legally re-instated. This whole affair has shown the US to be just as it was under Bush as far as Latin American policy is concerned just the rhetoric has changed but the reality remains the same as reactionaries such as Jim Demint are able to force the Obama administrations hand and get them to recognise the coup elections. Of course this may have been what the Obama administration wanted anyway.

Honduras en lucha!


Honduras' sham election
Shaun Joseph analyzes the upcoming elections in Honduras--a sham vote orchestrated by the coup regime after it broke its commitment to restore Manuel Zelaya.

November 24, 2009



JUST OVER five months since the June 28 coup d'etat against Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, elections scheduled for November 29 will complete the current phase of the struggle over Honduras' future--but only by opening another, perhaps darker, period.

A "peaceful" resolution to the Honduran drama was widely expected after October 30, when U.S. negotiators brokered the Tegucigalpa/San José Accords between representatives Zelaya and the golpista (coup-maker) government headed by Roberto Micheletti.

But Washington's hands-off behavior in the following week allowed Micheletti to break the agreement by unilaterally announcing the formation of a "unity government," headed by himself, while the golpista-controlled Congress deliberately dithered on the question of restoring Zelaya to office, which was the prime condition of the opposition to the coup regime to recognize the elections.

Although the Accords are obviously in tatters--members of the "unity government" aren't even known, nearly three weeks after they were supposed to be installed--the U.S. insists on acting as if everything is still going according to plan. This is because the agreement, were it not a fiction, would legitimize the upcoming elections and lead to the normalization of Honduras' international relations, which is important for North American corporations, especially in the fruit, textile and mining sectors.


For more on the situation in Honduras, Spanish speakers can find live streaming video from the Venezuelan TV station TeleSur. The Honduran TV network Cholusat Sur and radio station Radio Globo also provide live streams, although both are frequently pulled off the air by the golpistas.

English speakers can find frequent updates at the excellent Honduras Oye!, Honduras Coup 2009, Honduras Resists and Quotha.

The Facebook page Miguel and Shaun in Honduras also posts frequent updates from a variety of sources in both languages.


Although the concessions to Zelaya--which were actually minor and largely symbolic--have been voided by the golpistas, the U.S. wants to retain the provisions dear to its own capitalist interests.

But while the U.S. plans to recognize the November 29 elections, it has so far found no other country willing to join it, at least publicly. On the contrary, a number of Latin American countries have openly stated that they won't recognize elections carried out under the golpista dictatorship. These countries include Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

It will be difficult for the U.S. to carry any Latin American countries with its line, even traditional allies. Not only is Latin American popular opinion solidly opposed to the Honduras coup, but a section of the region's elite also understands the toppling of Zelaya as an attack on attempts to build capitalist links independent of U.S. imperialism. The Organization of American States (OAS), traditionally a U.S. instrument, has refused to send observers or provide technical assistance for the elections.

So the Obama administration--supposed advocates of "smart power" in contrast to the Bush presidency--have demonstrated their "smartness" by devising a diplomatic fiasco in Latin America much worse than anything its predecessor ever bumbled into.

Of course, U.S. imperialism's priorities of defending American power limit its prospects for success in any circumstance. But the Obama administration has cut a sorry figure, even on the tactical level.

The clearest statements on Obama's Honduras policy seem to be funneled through Republican senators: Jim DeMint of South Carolina was first to announce Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's promise to recognize the Honduran elections, regardless of Zelaya's status, and Richard Lugar of Indiana announced that the State Department would fund "election observation missions" organized by the National Democratic Institute and the International Republican Institute (international fronts of the Democratic and Republican Parties, respectively).

In the meanwhile, the administration had no response to two letters from Zelaya himself, despite the fact that he is Honduras' legitimate head of state, according to every nation and international body in the world.

The Obama administration seems to think it can erase five months of dictatorship through a ready-to-order election. In reality, they are inviting a more severe crisis.

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THE CALL of the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d'Etat to boycott the coming elections has been widely taken up across Honduran civil society. A letter renouncing the elections signed by over 300 candidates was delivered by U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky to Obama, although the names haven't been released due to fear of reprisals from the golpista regime.

Among those known to have withdrawn from the vote are independent presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes; Rodolfo Padilla Sunceri, the incumbent Liberal Party mayor of San Pedro Sula, Honduras' second city; Elvia Argentina Valle Villalta, the incumbent Liberal Congress deputy from Copán; and Margarita Zelaya de Elvir, the Liberals' vice presidential candidate. There have been resignations by candidates of all parties--including, incredibly, at least one from the center-right National Party.

Unfortunately, the leftist Democratic Unification Party (UD), which previously associated itself with the anti-coup resistance, made the astonishing decision to participate in the elections, affirmed a party conference on November 21.

UD claims that it doesn't want any offices vacated by its members to fall into golpista hands. But in the unlikely event that UD kept all its positions, or even gained more, its officials would have zero effect in a regime spawned by a military dictatorship.

To be sure, as the sole organized party of the left, UD would lose a great deal by withdrawing from the elections, as the party would certainly be stripped of its legal status. But now, UD will lose something far more precious: the respect of the most politically conscious militants in Honduras. (Some individual UD candidates have withdrawn from the vote.)

Naturally, the boycott question is forcing everyone in and around the anti-coup resistance to take sides. More surprising, however, is that the elections, instead of giving the oligarchy's leadership the opportunity to regroup and reorient, seem to be tearing them apart. The key fault lines lie between the two major parties on the one hand, and between the politicians and the military on the other.

Both Zelaya and Micheletti are members of the Liberal Party. After the coup, a "melista" (Zelaya-supporting) faction of the Liberals went over to the resistance, where it tended to constitute a more conservative, compromising wing of the grassroots opposition to the golpistas.

If the Accords had been implemented, the melistas would have been a natural bridge back to electoralism and rapprochement with the Liberal mainstream. In the face of golpista intransigence, though, the Liberal Party is now hopelessly split--its presidential candidate, Elvin Santos, is running a distant second to Porfirio "Pepe" Lobo of the National Party.

Unfortunately for Lobo, the fact that the elections will not be monitored by any credible organizations, but a motley crew of pro-coup kooks and flunkies, greatly increases the chances for fraud. Suspicious results could have the two golpista parties at each others' throats.

The second, perhaps graver, division is between the politicians and top military officers. As Andrés Pavón of the Honduran human rights organization CODEH said in a statement on November 14:

The military command feels profoundly nervous about the current situation they confront, as the politicians have left them alone for weeks, and [the commanders] have sniffed out, with good reason, the incapacity of the new government, which will be derived from the fraudulent electoral process, to completely protect them from the consequences of their criminal actions at the national and international levels.

No government in Honduras will willingly accept economic and diplomatic sanctions imposed on the country just to protect military officers from jail. So the military could become convenient scapegoats to calm cries for justice in the wake of the election.

Pavón says that inside sources leaked to him plans for a military provocation on November 29--with paramilitary units, disguised as a fictitious "Armed Command of the Resistance," committing a massacre. The massacre will then be used as justification for a campaign of terror against the National Resistance Front. The plan is said to have been devised by Gen. Romeo Vásquez Velásquez, head of the Honduran military and a graduate of the School of the Americas.

Pavón's credibility is impeccable, so it is likely that this heinous scheme is at least being discussed in military circles. The Front apparently considers it a serious threat and referred to the plot specifically in its most recent communiqué.

Indeed, there is a distinct possibility of a "coup within a coup," with the military taking direct power and demagogically blaming the politicians for the crisis. Micheletti's bizarre declaration that he intends to "absent [himself] from the exercising of [his] public functions" from November 25 to December 2 increases the chances of such a military seizure of power.

This would truly take Honduras back to the dark ages, turning the clock back further than even the golpistas intended.

Repression everywhere, plans for possible bloodbaths, rumors of coups, free speech trampled, an election that promises more violence than voting--and the U.S. government clings to the idea that the November 29 elections will be a step forward for stability and democracy!

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INTERNATIONAL SOLIDARITY is critical--the resistance needs the time and political space to reorient itself for a new period in the struggle.

Simply exposing the plans for provocations can help defeat them, since they require some degree of secrecy to work. Activists in the U.S. should also agitate against recognition of whatever regime emerges after November 29, against special trade status for Honduras (such as membership in CAFTA), and against all international aid (including "humanitarian" aid that cannot be trusted to an anti-popular regime).

One remarkable victory for international solidarity came November 17, when Russell Athletic agreed to rehire 1,200 Honduran workers who had been fired after they formed a union at their factor. The victory was a result of a campaign by United Students Against Sweatshops, which got several universities to sever licensing deals with Russell and exposed the company's misdeeds at a series of public events. This should serve as an inspiration.

The stakes are much higher in the struggle over the coup. It involves not just an economic struggle in one factory, but the political class struggle nationally and internationally.

Still, for all its power, U.S. imperialism is isolated, exposed and discredited in Latin America today. An international resistance can win.


Fuente: socialistworker.org

Honduras election sets return to business as usual.

The article mentions little about the conditions under which the elections are taking place. It is a criminal offence to recommend boycotting the elections among other things and rallies can only be had with permission of the coup government. The US will no doubt recognise the elections no matter what. It seems that Senator Demint's agreement to allow the nomination of the ambassador to Brazil and of Arturo Valenzuela to go through was conditional upon the US recognising the Honduran presidential elections. This will put the US at odds with the Rio group. There is going to be more and more conflict between the US and many Latin American countries but with some such as Panama and Colombia seeking to ally themselves with the US. No doubt Honduras will also do so. Honduras was a springboard for anti-Sandinista operations funded by the US.
This article seems to think that there might be some accommodation between the new president and Zelaya but that seems unlikely although perhaps this might be useful in gaining recognition from other Latin American countries. This is from antiwar.com


Honduras election sets return to business as usual

Zelaya platform dead as Honduras presidential election marks return to business as usual

OLGA R. RODRIGUEZ
AP News

Nov 22, 2009 14:38 EST

The coup last summer in this tiny, Central American country blew up into an international incident, with thousands of Hondurans taking to the streets while everyone from Barack Obama to Fidel Castro lined up behind ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Now, with Zelaya still holed up in the Brazilian Embassy, voters will choose a new president Nov. 29 from the political establishment that has dominated Honduras for decades.

No one is pushing the leftist agenda of the ousted leader, who said he was trying to lift a country where seven in 10 people are poor.

That's because Zelaya was disturbing a deeply conservative society that has long cherished peace and stability.

"It's a risk-averse culture," said Manuel Orozco, a Central America expert with the Washington-based Inter-American Dialogue.

The months of turmoil as Zelaya pressed for his reinstatement, the negotiation and U.S. shuttle diplomacy are about to be overtaken by business as usual — Honduran style.

Even many of the poor who supported Zelaya as he aligned himself with Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Latin America's new left say they will vote for conservative front-runner Porfirio Lobo, a 61-year-old wealthy businessman who is ahead by double digits in the polls.

"I will vote for the one who can fix this and give us work right now, because those suffering are the poor," said Reina Gomez, 53, a single mother who washes clothes for a living and who supported Zelaya in 2005.

Zelaya, a commanding figure whose standard uniform includes a white cowboy hat, was prohibited by the constitution from running for more than one term — even before the military whisked him out of the country at gunpoint in the June 28 coup.

His opponents said he wanted to follow in Chavez's footsteps and revise the constitution to extend his time in office. Zelaya denies any such intention.

Honduras has always been run by a handful of families who control the news media, economy and every power sphere from the military to the Supreme Court.

As many of Central America's conservative governments battled leftist insurgencies from the 1960s to the 1980s, Honduras had no civil war and served as a key staging area for U.S.-backed Contras fighting Nicaragua's leftist Sandinista government.

But in one of the Western Hemisphere's poorest nations, gaunt workers in torn shoes and worn clothing trudge from their hillside shanty towns past Tegucigalpa's gleaming shopping malls to work in garment factories or American fast food restaurants.

Most survive on $250 a month.

"Here the politicians don't appreciate the people. They promise you all kinds of things but one comes in and then the next, and things are still the same," said construction worker Mario Espinal, 52, whose work diminished by half when international loans were cut off in the political crisis.

Like his counterparts from Nicaragua to Ecuador, Zelaya began preaching reform that favored the poor. He raised the minimum wage by 60 percent and pulled in Venezuelan aid that included free tractors and $300 million a year for agricultural investment.

"President Zelaya gave us hope that the people of Honduras would finally be able to emancipate themselves from a group of oligarchs that have kept this country subjugated through a constitution that was shaped to protect their interests," said Andres Pavon, a human rights activist.

While many Hondurans want reform, they were reluctant to trust Zelaya, a wealthy rancher elected from one of the two major conservative parties.

Orozco notes that other Latin American leftist leaders — from Chavez to Bolivia's Evo Morales and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva in Brazil — grew up poor. They also spent years building their grass-roots movements, while Zelaya — with support from a couple unions and student groups — started shooting from the hip late in his term.

Zelaya "belongs to the elite, and he chose to dismiss his own peers and paid the price for that," Orozco said. "Those leaders have a hard time communicating their message. They think that because you like the poor, the poor are going to like you."

According to the CID-Gallup Poll, Zelaya's job-approval rating dropped steadily from 2007 to just 38 percent in October 2008, though it had rebounded to 53 percent by February and has held steady around 50 percent since. But beyond the first week of his ouster, he had a hard time amassing large numbers of supporters demanding his return.

Meanwhile, the left in Honduras is divided into small parties with few resources — and without a charismatic leader to unite them into a movement strong enough to challenge the conservative stronghold.

Presidential front-runner Lobo, who lost to Zelaya in 2005, is campaigning on a return to normalcy and blames Zelaya's Liberal Party for thrusting the country into international turmoil. His main opponent is the Liberal Party's Elvin Santos, a construction magnate.

The U.S-brokered pact with the interim government of Roberto Micheletti leaves the decision to reinstate Zelaya with the Honduran Congress, which has yet to vote. Zelaya has said he would not return to the presidency if Congress votes to restore him after the elections because that would legitimize the coup. The new president chosen in next week's elections will not take office until January.

But some say Zelaya might have done just enough to awaken a leftist movement in Honduras — either led by him or someone else.

"I can see Lobo setting something up and smoothing over things with Zelaya because he wants to ensure Zelaya won't be a nuisance," said Heather Berkman of the Eurasia Group. "I don't think his political career is over. I can see him coming back in some shape or form."

______

Associated Press Writer Alexandra Olson in Mexico City contributed to this report.

US to fund Honduran election observers including mission of National Democratic Institute

Just one more skit in the farce that is the US brokered agreement to solve the Honduran crisis. Zelaya has already said that the agreement is dead and that even if the Congress does reinstate in a vote to be taken after the elections he will not accept the reinstatement. Micheletti and his supporters simply used the agreement as a means to stall implementing the agreement until after the elections. The US at one point at least said that it would recognise the elections whether Zelaya was reinstated or not. Very little coverage is given in the media of this tawdry episode in US diplomacy. It would seem that the US and Panama will be among the few countries to recognise the legitimacy of the elections. One would expect the International Republican Institute to go along with this but it seems the issue is bi-partisan and all the feigned opposition to Micheletti is just that as far as Democrats are concerned. But what could one expect since Micheletti is represented in the US by a big PR firm associated with Hilary Clinton This is from the Huffington Post.

Robert NaimanPolicy Director of Just Foreign Policy

Will the National Democratic Institute Support the Coup in Honduras?



A statement put out by Senator Lugar's office this week contained a striking revelation: apparently, the State Department intends to fund election observer missions of the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute for the controversial November 29 Honduras election supervised by the coup regime. If the US sends election observers before President Zelaya is restored, it would prepare the ground for recognizing the coup regime and its election as legitimate, putting the U.S. at odds with the rest of the hemisphere. Funding election observers appears to be part of a strategy of legitimizing the June coup against President Zelaya.

Both the IRI and the NDI are funded by Congress through the National Endowment for Democracy.

The International Republican Institute is affiliated with the Republican Party and the National Democratic Institute is affiliated with the Democratic Party. The IRI has a sordid history of anti-democratic actions, like supporting the 2004 coup in Haiti.

The NDI, on the other hand, is at least nominally accountable to the Democratic Party, so its involvement in trying to legitimize elections under the coup regime is quite surprising. Democratic leaders in Congress, like Senator Kerry and Representative Berman, have strongly opposed the coup. Congressional Democrats have urged President Obama not to recognize elections under the coup regime.

President Rich Trumka of the AFL-CIO, which has good relations, to say the least, with many Congressional Democrats, has written that continued repression of trade unionists by the coup regime makes it impossible to hold free and fair elections. President Trumka called on the U.S. government to oppose national elections in Honduras unless President Zelaya is reinstated. Note that Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, an AFL-CIO affiliate, sits on the NDI board.

All this suggests that if Members of Congress and Democratic constituency groups would speak up, the National Democratic Institute, at least, could be prevented from participating in the legitimation of elections under the coup regime.


Follow Robert Naiman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/naiman

Honduras Coup
Honduras

AFL-CIO: Free elections not possible now in Honduras

Of course this release by the AFL-CIO will get little publicity unless Glenn Beck decides it shows the AFL-CIO is supporting Chavez and communism or something! The stance of the USA at present is to preserve a deafening silence as more pressing issues occupy the public consciousness. However, it seems that the US will recognise the electoral results whether Zelaya is reinstated or not and in spite of repression. In fact one can be put in jail for recommending that the election be boycotted. The indpendent candidate has already withdrawn and some groups are boycotting the vote.

Trumka: Free Elections Not Possible Now in Honduras

by James Parks, Nov 16, 2009

The continued repression of trade unionists by the regime set up in Honduras after a June 28 coup makes it impossible to hold free and fair elections, says AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka in a Nov. 13 letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Trumka points out that delegates to the AFL-CIO Convention in September passed a resolution calling on the U.S. government to suspend military aid to Honduras until President Manuel Zelaya, the democratically elected leader, is returned to office and human and trade union rights have been restored.

Click here to read the convention resolution on Honduras and here to read Trumka’s letter.

With an illegitimate government in power, scheduled elections later this month cannot be fair, free and open, Trumka says.


The violent and coercive repression of political opposition to the de facto coup regime, including trade unionists, has continued. At least 12 trade unionists have died in the violence since June 28. National and international human rights organizations report ongoing human rights violations committed by state security forces, including killings, severe beatings, sexual violence, the imprisonment and torture of activists, as well as the arrest and detention of President Zelaya’s supporters.

Trumka calls on Clinton and the U.S. government to oppose national elections in Honduras unless Zelaya is reinstated and to implement the recommendations in the AFL-CIO resolution.

Micheletti playing a new game!

This has all been on great farce from the beginning. While the point of negotiations was supposed to be to reinstate Zelaya as president at every step of the way Micheletti has steadfastly refused to grant his restoration at all. When finally it looked as if he would do so he has done nothing but stall and will not even call Congress to consider ratification of the agreement and Zelaya's reinstatement until after the presidential election! Although there were supposed to be further negotiations on implementation of the agreement there seems to be no new news and for Zelaya's side the agreement is in effect dead. Micheletti went ahead and formed a socalled unity government all on his own! If things continue as they are probably most Latin American states will not recgonise the results. However, the US probably will! These excerpts are from presstv.

Honduran interim leader may resign

Honduran interim leader Roberto Micheletti says that he may resign from his position temporarily ahead of the Nov. 29 presidential elections.

Micheletti said that he will consult his advisers about resignation ahead of the vote and by Dec. 2, when Congress is scheduled to vote on whether to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

"My purpose with this measure is for the attention of all Hondurans to concentrate on the electoral process and not on the political crisis," Micheletti said Thursday.

He did not say who would be in charge of the government if he takes the weeklong leave of absence, adding that he would immediately return to the presidency should threats to order and security arise.

After Zelaya was ousted by the country's military on June 28, Micheletti was named president by Congress.

The ousted leftist leader derided Micheletti's announcement as 'an easy maneuver ... to deceive fools,' the Associated Press reported.

Zelaya again warned that he would not return to the presidency if Congress votes to restore him after the elections, saying doing so would legitimize the coup.

"It's illegal and violates the rights of the voters because it tries to hide a coup d'état," Zelaya said.

The Honduran elections are fraudulent.

Note that it would seem that in return for support of the coup by the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy the Micheletti regime has renewed a ban on a contraceptive pill. Unless some changes occur in the implementation of the agreement most countries will not recognise the upcoming elections. This article fails to note that it is against the law to recommend boycotting the elections! It seems that the media for the most part is ignoring the farce that is playing out in Honduras. After all the important issue is Sarah Palin's new book and her interviews here there and everywhere.

HONDURAS: “The Elections are Fraudulent” – (Green Left Weekly)
2009 November 15

.Honduras: ‘The elections are fraudulent’

Stuart Munckton
14 November 2009
“On November 29, we are not going to have time to vote”, Juan Barahona, a leader of the National Resistance Front Against the Coup on Honduras (FNRG) told the media in front of the Honduran Congress on November 12, Rightsaction.org said that day.

Barahona spoke on the 137th day of continued popular resistance to the June 28 military coup that overthrew the government of elected President Manuel Zelaya. Barahona was explaining the FNRG’s decision to continue with its call for a boycott of the November 29 general elections organised by the coup regime.

The FNRG, which has led the mass resistance, unites a wide range of social movements, trade unions and anti-coup political groups.

After daily mass protests and strikes since the coup severely affected the Central American nation’s economy, the coup regime led by dictator Roberto Micheletti finally signed an accord on October 30 intended to pave the way for Zelaya’s reinstatement.

Honduran business elites, who had backed the coup, are desperate for a resolution to the conflict. A November Center for Economic and Policy Research report indicated the severity of the crisis: “Jesus Canahuati, vice president of the nation’s chapter of the Business Council of Latin America, estimates that the curfew imposed by the de facto regime [to combat the mass resistance] cost the economy [US]$50 million per day …

“As recently as June, Consensus Economic had forecasted 0.7 percent growth for 2009; by late September this was lowered to negative 2.6 percent.”

However, despite its need to end the economic isolation imposed by other governments and international institutions, the coup regime remains terrified of the consequences of restoring Zelaya on the back of a powerful mass movement of the poor majority.

When the coup regime failed to meet the November 5 deadline to form a government of “national unity” headed by Zelaya, the FNRG and Zelaya declared the deal dead.

Rightsaction.org said: “Honduran people’s pro-democracy, anti-coup movement continues to take to the streets, this time in front of the National Congress to keep up the energy, discuss strategy and reconfirm their commitment to boycott the elections.”

On November 8, independent presidential candidate and well-respected resistance figure, Carlos H. Reyes, said he would pull out of the elections, Rightsaction.org said.

Zelaya and the FNRG have called on governments and international institutions, none of which have recognised Michelleti’s regime as legitimate, not to recognise the results of the November 29 elections and to continue pushing for Zelaya’s return.

However, on November 4, the US government’s chief negotiator in the conflict said Washington would recognise the vote, a November 12 Inter-Press Service article said. Unlike other governments in the region, the US has not broken all ties with the regime. US military ties and most economic aid remain intact.

Despite Washington’s formal condemnation of the coup, the FNRG has accused it of helping to organise Zelaya’s overthrow and of propping up Micheletti’s regime.

The FNRG has raised the fact that all Honduran military officers are trained by the US. It has also pointed out that when Zelaya was kidnapped by the military on June 28, the plane that exiled him to Costa Rica left from a US military base inside Honduras.

IPS said on November 5 that, in stark contrast to Washington’s stance, foreign ministers from the 24 Latin American and Caribbean nations that make up the Rio Group declared at a meeting in Jamaica they would not recognise the November 29 poll. They again called for Zelaya’s reinstatement.

Speaking outside Congress on November 12, Rightsaction.org said Bertha Caceres, a leader of Civic Counsel of Indigenous and Popular Organizations of Honduras (COPINH) and the FNRG, declared: “We remain firmly convinced that the struggle of the Honduran people is for the re-foundation of our country. We are going to construct a just and more humane country where they listen and where the people make the decisions …

“We have learned the last names of our enemies … It’s the oligarchy, they are our enemies, the transnationals, the gringos, that put in systems of domination, not just in Honduras, but the entire region.”

In a speech to a November 1 public meeting posted at Hondorusresists.blogspot.com, Caceres explained how Zelaya had upset the Honduran oligarchy and multinational corporate interests: “Zelaya said he won’t give out any mining concessions. So these men started condemning him.

“He rejected the acceptance speech the day that he took power sent to him by Carlos Flores Facusse [one of the richest businessmen in Honduras], already written. President Zelaya throws it aside.

“Carlos Flores Facusse is one of the men who decides the destiny of this country.”

She explained how Zelaya’s policy of regulating the oil and gas industry caused “Texaco, Esso and Shell [to] lose more than $200 million” in one year.

As well as increasing the minimum wage by 60%, Caceres said Zelaya also introduced an education bill that improved wages and conditions for teachers despite International Monetary Fund opposition.

Zelaya also advanced the rights of women against the opposition of the Catholic Church by abolishing a ban on the contraceptive pill — which the coup regime has since reinstated.

Zelaya had called for the closure of the US Palmerola military base. His government also joined the anti-imperialist political and trade bloc initiated by Cuba and Venezuela, the Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas.

Caceres told the crowd: “Brothers and sisters we should never forget the names of the coup-makers, whether they are transnational corporations, businessmen, or congressmen who serve the corrupt hackneyed political class the Honduran people are tired of.”

On November 8, the general assembly of the FRNG, which meets weekly with large ongoing participation, celebrated the decision to boycott the elections, Rightsaction.org said.

“There is growing anticipation and tension, and speculation as to what will happen on election day. Strategies are being discussed and meetings are being organized in communities and neighbourhoods across the country.

“The coordinating body of the resistance movement is encouraging people to mobilize, boycott and protest on the election day. Community education and organizing continues …”

From: International News, Green Left Weekly issue #818 18 November 2009. “

Washington Stresses Urgency of Honduran Unity Government

The deal brokered by Washington was vague on the details of implentation and this allowed Micheletti to in effect refuse to reinstate Zelaya. Micheletti has been adamant throughout that he would never countenance the return of Zelaya. He has snookered Zelaya and the OAS as well. In the case of Washington they are probably ambiguous. It seems pro-coup politicians actually have taken over the policy as a deal was made with De Mint to allow a nomination for ambassador for Brazil to go thr0ugh in exchange for recognition of the elections in Honduras whether or not Zelaya was installed. This decision puts the US at odds with the OAS and most of Europe. Washington now realises that Honduras will still face international isolation unless some less fraudulent process is negotiated. However the US may not have much success. Zelaya has learned his lesson and will not go along just to receive a kick in the pants.

- Antiwar.com -

Washington Stresses Urgency of Honduran Unity Government

Posted By Jim Lobe

In a renewed effort to save a U.S.-sponsored accord to resolve the five-month-old political crisis in Honduras, the U.S. State Department Friday called on both sides to create a government of national unity "without delay" and on the Honduran Congress to "swiftly" consider the restoration of ousted President Manuel Zelaya.
Failure to do so would make it less likely that the elections currently scheduled to take place Nov. 29 will gain international recognition, warned a State Department spokesperson.

"Both sides need to return to the table and negotiate the formation of a government of national unity," the spokesperson told IPS. "Both sides need to adhere to the spirit and letter of the accord that they signed, including on the issue of President Zelaya’s restitution."

"The Tegucigalpa/San Jose Agreement provides a pathway to free and fair elections, the outcome of which, if handled accordingly, will be widely accepted both within Honduras and abroad," she said.

"Failure to implement the accord could jeopardize recognition of the election by the international community," she stressed, adding that Washington is pressing the de facto regime headed by Roberto Micheletti and other actors in Honduras to avoid "taking actions that would impede the carrying out of free, fair and transparent elections, such as [recent] decrees [by the de facto government] that restricted civil liberties and closed certain opposition media outlets."

She also noted for the first time since the Jun. 29 coup that ousted Zelaya and sent him into exile that Washington has been and remains "concerned" about the human rights situation in Honduras under the de facto regime.

The spokesperson’s statement, which followed an intense, 48-hour mediation effort in Tegucigalpa by Deputy Assistant Secretary Craig Kelly, appeared designed to add pressure on all parties in Honduras to implement the Oct. 30 accord and to move Washington closer to the position taken by the Rio Group of 24 Latin American and Caribbean nations which earlier this week declared they would not recognize the results of the impending elections unless Zelaya was immediately restored to office.

"The Obama administration is ramping up pressure on the Honduran Congress to fulfill the spirit of the accord and vote for Zelaya’s return," said Michael Shifter, vice president of the Inter-American Dialogue (IAD), a Washington-based a hemispheric think tank.

"The statement is also signaling that, even if Washington recognizes the election results, the new Honduran government is going to face real problems in dealing with the rest of the international community," he added. "And without backing away from its position, the State Department is now trying to bridge the gap between Washington and the rest of the hemisphere on the Honduras question."

The original accord provided for a step-by-step process to restore the constitutional order in Honduras, beginning with the formation of a unity government and ending in the Nov. 29 elections for a new Congress and president that would assume their positions in January.

Brokered by the U.S., the accord was backed by the Organization of American States (OAS) and its member countries.

But Latin American leaders and some U.S. Democratic lawmakers were shocked when, on Nov. 4, Washington’s chief negotiator on Honduras, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon, told a CNN interviewer that the U.S. would recognize the results of the election regardless of whether Zelaya was restored to the presidency.

U.S. officials – most recently Washington’s representative to the OAS, Lewis Anselem, during a debate earlier this week – pointed out that the literal terms of the accord did not require Zelaya’s restoration but instead left it to the Honduran Congress to decide his fate.

Shannon’s position – apparently the result of a deal with right-wing Republican senators who until then had held hostage a number of appointments to key positions in the State Department’s Western Hemisphere Bureau – provoked cries of betrayal by Zelaya, and his supporters and consternation in the OAS and throughout Latin America, particularly Brazil whose embassy in Tegucigalpa has served as Zelaya’s refuge since he snuck back into the country in September.

It also helped precipitate the apparent collapse of the accord, as the leadership of the Honduran Congress said they intended to delay a vote on Zelaya’s restoration at least until after the elections and Micheletti announced that he had put together a unity government without any input from Zelaya.

Meeting in Jamaica Nov. 5, the Rio Group of 24 Latin American and Caribbean foreign minister issued a communiqué insisting that its members would not recognize the outcome of the Nov. 29 elections unless Zelaya was immediately returned to office. OAS Secretary General Jose Miguel Insulza issued a similar statement and announced that the hemispheric group would not send observers to the upcoming elections.

It is in this context that Friday’s statement – and particularly its exhortation addressed to both sides to adhere to the "spirit," as well as the "letter" of the accord, including on the issue of President Zelaya’s restitution" – offers a potentially significant, if subtle, change in Washington’s stance.

In another passage of the extensive guidance prepared by the State Department, the spokesperson conceded that "The accord does not have an exact timeline for a Congressional decision. However, the spirit of the Accord suggests that the Congress should deal with the issue in the most expeditious manner possible. We urge the Congress to move swiftly on this matter," she said.

"The Obama administration may have lost its leverage (with Shannon’s Nov. 4 statement)," said Shifter, "but it does not want to let the Honduran Congress off the hook."

"It’s a hopeful move, both because it recognizes for the first time that human rights violations have taken place and that elections will not be recognized internationally unless the spirit, as well as the letter, of the accord is complied with," agreed Vicki Gass, a Honduras specialist at the Washington Office on Latin America (WOLA). "It’s clear that the administration is trying to repair the damage it has inflicted over the last ten days."

Gass, however, expressed doubt that the Nov. 29 elections could still be considered legitimate even if Micheletti and the Congress heed Washington’s new message and restore Zelaya to office. Fifty-five of 128 Congressional candidates, and more than 100 of 298 mayoral candidates, including the incumbent of Honduras’ second largest city, San Pedro Sula, have withdrawn from their races, she said, as has Carlos H. Reyes, an independent candidate who has been running third of five decided among five candidates in recent polling.

And, as the State Department spokesperson noted, pro-Zelaya broadcast stations that were closed earlier this fall are still facing interrupted service on certain news programs, while an Oct. 5 decree providing for the revocation of the operating licenses of media outlets deemed to violate national security and public order remains in effect.

While Washington supports the elections, she said, "it is self-evident … that while [they] are a necessary element to restoring democratic and constitutional order in Honduras, they are insufficient by themselves to achieving reconciliation in Honduras and fully restoring the democratic order."

Zelaya refuses any deal that would cover up coup.

Zelaya was completely misled by the earlier deal. He understood it as a negotiation for his reinstatement but the Micheletti govt. simply used it as an excuse to go ahead with the presidential elections and stall any vote in Congress on approving the deal. At the same time the US changed its tune and said they would recognise the election whether Zelaya was re-instated or not. This all seemed part of a deal to stop a senator's objections to the appointment of a new Brazilian ambassador. This Obama regime is an abomination. The US is holding further meetings because so far the OAS and many other nations are not impressed by what has happened in Honduras. Certainly there are no conditions present for holding free presidential elections.

Ousted Honduran leader says won't negotiate return


Deposed Honduran President Manuel Zelaya said on Saturday he would refuse to return to the presidency as part of any deal to end the crisis sparked by his ouster, saying that to do so would legitimize a June coup. A U.S.-brokered agreement to end the political deadlock in the central American nation collapsed earlier this month after de facto leader Roberto Micheletti said he would form a new government without Zelaya.

"From this date onward, I reaffirm my decision not to accept any agreement to return to the presidency (that would) cover up this coup," Zelaya said, reading from a letter written to U.S. President Barack Obama.

Zelaya had initially welcomed the pact, which he said was meant to reinstate him.

South American leaders have called for his reinstatement but Washington seemed to weaken his position by saying it would recognise a November 29 presidential election simply on the basis of the signing of the accord.

Under the pact, Congress was supposed to vote on whether or not Zelaya would be restored to power, but no deadline was set and lawmakers have dragged their feet.

Zelaya sneaked back into the country in September and has been living in the Brazilian Embassy ever since.

Recent Information out of Honduras and analysis of US responses

Here is a very interesting group of posts from the Hondurascoup blog.
Much of what is posted here would be impossible to find in mainstream news reports. In fact as of now mainstream reports on Honduras are approaching nil! Notice that it is now a crime to suggest to people that the presidential elections should be boycotted.


Honduras Coup 2009
Responses to the Coup d'etat in Honduras on Sunday June 28, with special emphasis on producing English-language versions of commentaries by Honduran scholars and editorial writers and addressing the confusion encouraged by lack of basic knowledge about Honduras.

: Inaccurate arguments about constitutional and legal issues persist


Posted by RAJ at 2:51 PM 6 comments Links to this post
Labels: Congreso Nacional, Constitution, Honduras coup, Supreme Court
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Vapid US Policy Statement
The Voice of America website, under a byline "The following is an editorial reflecting the views of the US government", has just published one of the oddest texts I think I have ever read.

Here for the record is a professional deconstruction of this text, from my perspective as an avowed post-structuralist:

Efforts to return deposed President Manuel Zelaya to office and end the crippling political crisis in Honduras have hit another roadblock.

This form of statement, leaving out any agent (actor), is typical of rhetoric that attempts to avoid responsibility. Efforts have hit a roadblock: not because the US State Department made pronouncements that encouraged parties to misbehave, just because roadblocks are there...

The United States is disappointed that both parties haven't been able to reach agreement on the creation of a government of national unity under the Tegucigalpa-San Jose accord, and it urges leaders there to stay focused on it. While the U.S. and other hemispheric nations worked hard to bring the parties together, the stalemate is a Honduran problem that must have a Honduran solution.

"The stalemate is a Honduran problem". Well, not exactly. The stalemate is a problem exacerbated by the aforementioned US State Department pronouncements. But what is most interesting here is that the "disappointment" of the US is the topic of this paragraph. Not the consequences for the Honduran people. And who precisely are the "leaders" urged to stay focused on "it"-- and is that "it" the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord, or the "government of national unity"?

Under the terms of the agreement, signed late last month, President Zelaya and Honduras's de facto regime agreed to let Congress decide on the president's return. A presidential election set for November 29 will determine who succeeds President Zelaya and a government of national unity will operate until the new president takes office, among other provisions.

More or less accurate. But notice the very revealing slide: "A presidential election set for November 29 will determine who succeeds President Zelaya": or, to put it another way: President Zelaya is still and will be the legally elected president, presumably no matter what the Congress decides about his "return".

Both sides need to return to the table and fulfill their commitment to forming a government of national unity, and all parties should avoid provocative statements and actions that could upset the process.

Ah, how much the US State Department wishes other people would "avoid provocative statements"; like, perhaps, publicly stating that the US would recognize the election no matter whether the legally elected President was allowed to return to his constitutional position or not?

Before voting on the president's return, congressional leaders have asked for input from the Supreme Court, attorney general and human rights ombudsman. This is consistent with the accord and was agreed to by both parties during the negotiation of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.

Well, no. The Accord did say that the Congress would vote after previously receiving a report from the Supreme Court. But there is nothing in it (go, read it for yourself!) about asking the attorney general to pronounce (and remember, Edmundo Orellana's legal opinion is that this would be against the law); and no one actually asked Ramon Custodio to provide a report; he just got enthusiastic. What the Accord-- and remember, I think it is a lousy piece of writing-- called for was for the Supreme Court to provide Congress a report (on what has never been clear to anyone: they cannot simply issue a verdict on charges against him, and without some constitutional issue in front of them, they cannot judge whether it would be legal or illegal for congress to revoke its own decreto of June 28). Period.

Isn't revisionist history fun?

The United States’ commitment is to the accord and its implementation and to the restoration of democratic constitutional order in Honduras. It provides a pathway to free and fair elections, the outcome of which will be widely accepted both within Honduras and abroad.

"It" is ambiguous (again). What provides a "pathway to free and fair elections"? One presumes the intended reference is "the accord", but it could as easily be "the United States commitment" or even, unlikely as it may seem, "democratic constitutional order".

In any event, this entire paragraph is a fantasy. The outcome of these purported "free and fair elections", which will not be observed by any official third-party outsiders, are already being repudiated by every member of the OAS from Latin America; by UNASUR; by the Central American and Caribbean nations; and there is a debate pending in the EU but Spain has already said there cannot be any legitimacy in the elections scheduled for just 16 days from now.

And as for "widely accepted within Honduras": well, yes. But that is not something to be happy about; the wide acceptance of elections that fail to live up to the standards of democracy is a symptom of the corrosion of Honduran popular belief in democracy itself.

The United States will respect any decision by the Honduran Congress, and is working to create an environment in which Hondurans themselves can address and resolve the issues that precipitated the crisis. With this behind them, the nation may move forward to address the many other challenges facing it.

Ah me: "the nation may move forward"-- precisely how? how does a country so polarized "move forward" when the one thing that is now certain is that any outcome-- "any decision by the Honduran Congress"-- will be accepted by the hemispheric power that has been most influential on the modern politics of Honduras? Does that "any decision" include, say, an assertion that Roberto Micheletti was inserted into power legally because the Congress says so?

And finally: "the issues that precipitated the crisis". No longer even able to clearly label a coup d'etat what it is, and giving in at the end to what has always been lurking below the surface: this whole incident would not have happened if there were not prior "precipitating" events.

No wonder the President of Paraguay is nervous. God help us when this is the best the US State Department can come up with.
Posted by RAJ at 4:34 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Tegucigalpa/San Jose Accord, US State Department
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Media Outlets Threatened Again
Police Commissioner Danilo Orellana says that some anti-de facto government media outlets are instigating crimes by asking people to boycott the November 29 elections, and he is asking the Public Prosecutor's office to act against them.

"This is to instigate by action of committing a crime, its in the penal code. The Public Prosecutor needs to take more firm action."

Orellana also noted that the police were investigating the text messages that urged a boycott.

Orellana indicated the police have been making blacklists: "all those of the left, we removed the so called head, and we know everyone, from A to Z, who are those that form parts of these groups. (todos los de la izquierda sacaron como quien dice la cabeza y todo el mundo nos conocemos, desde la A hasta la Z, quiénes son los que forman parte de estos grupos)"

Orellana tried to tie the recent bombings and attacks on electric transmission towers to Frente de Resistencia and indicated that they intended to cause blackouts in determined parts of the country to impede the election.

Danilo Orellana, who was a spokesman for the police for more than 15 years before being promoted to police chief, was quoted in a 1995 New York Times article about the hunt for Battalion 3-16 fugitives in Honduras, "We are continuing to look for them, but we cannot find them." He said this about fugitives who were living at home on their ranches.
Posted by rns at 7:01 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: elections
"You don't punish the next guy"...
so says Shelley A. McConnell, described as "an assistant professor of government at St. Lawrence University and a former analyst at the Carter Center" in an article in the New York Times.

I beg to differ.

The "next guy" referred to here is the projected winner of the November 29 presidential election, who, if current polling holds, will almost certainly be Porfirio Lobo Sosa, of the National party. If he were without culpability in the current crisis, it might make sense to portray him as an innocent victim who should not be held responsible for what the architects of the coup wrought, or the intransigence of Roberto Micheletti that has blocked all attempted solutions.

But Pepe Lobo is more than the prospective presidential winner: he is a participant in the vote on June 28 through which the Honduran Congress unconstitutionally removed President Zelaya from office, and without legal basis, elevated Roberto Micheletti, then head of Congress, to the role of head of a de facto authoritarian regime born out of a military intervention.

More: Pepe Lobo is the one person who might be able to swing Congress into action even now to vote on the restoral of President Zelaya, and if reports by many media sources are to be credited, had made some sort of agreement with US diplomats to do just that as part of gaining President Zelaya's signature on the Tegucigalpa Accord.

Arguments that Lobo cannot risk alienating his voter base by supporting a vote on Zelaya are extremely unconvincing. He has a solid lead in an election where his main opposition provides the perfect illustration for the word "feckless": Elvin Santos, caught between the President he once served as Vice President, and the rival for the nomination who he managed to surpass only due to legal chicanery that almost defies description. (See this post for details). Who, since realizing the coup wasn't increasing his popularity, has tried to have it both ways: stating that he wasn't for the coup, exactly, although he isn't against the outcome, more or less...

If Pepe Lobo had called on the party he leads to convene an extraordinary congressional session a week ago, no matter what the outcome of the vote, we would not be in the situation we now are. Yes, the Frente de Resistencia would still have called for an election boycott, based on what in my opinion are accurate assessments that the election to come is a farce (if not an actual fraud in the making).

How on earth can anyone in the world pretend that the Honduran Armed Forces, guilty of kidnapping the President, complicit in violent repression of free speech, and so far from their apolitical mandate that the silence of their Chief is seen as a political statement, could possibly guarantee freedom of participation to the very people who have been beaten, tear-gassed, and in some cases, raped? Remember that the victims of this violence include the independent candidate for the presidency who only recently withdrew from the race: what kind of atmosphere exists, and doesn't the differential discouragement of dissenting voices guarantee that the outcome of the November election will be biased towards those who enjoy the status quo?

But if Congress had voted, even to reject the restitution of the constitutionally elected President, the terms of the Tegucigalpa Accord-- that ever-so-flawed illegitimate offspring of the San Jose Accord-- would at least not have been made an object of ridicule. And the clarity of such a decision would at least have potentially opened a path for the Verification Commission to oversee the formation of a unity government from which we might hope Micheletti also would have been persuaded to step aside.

So who should we not be punishing-- who is the "next guy" who has no guilt here? what about all those Honduran voters-- the 40% plus who do not think that the elections will solve anything? those who find themselves with no candidate to vote for, and no assurance that if the candidate they elect acts in ways the entrenched power elite doesn't care for, the Armed Forces won't again be called out by their real masters to clear the way for a more acceptable dictator? Can we not concede that the Honduran people are the "next guys" who shouldn't be punished by having the world accept that Honduras is not a State in the Rule of Law?

So again: I beg to differ.

And I cannot help but suspect that, like most of us in academia, Professor McConnell's remarks were rather more extensive than what is reported by the Times, and that she also would like a little more contextualization about what such a statement might mean.

After all, this is the same person quoted October 29 as saying

There is a great deal at stake for the inter-American system in how the crisis in Honduras is resolved...If ousted President Zelaya is not restored to office despite a region-wide condemnation of the coup, it will call into question the utility of the Inter-American Democratic Charter and indeed the concept of collective protection of democracy through the Organization of American States.
That is an opinion I can agree with. Those are the stakes that are going to require more than a sigh and acceptance of the status quo come January 28, 2010.
Posted by RAJ at 5:39 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Congreso Nacional, elections, Elvin Santos Ordoñez, José Manuel Zelaya Rosales, Pepe Lobo, Roberto Micheletti, Tegucigalpa/San Jose Accord
Tamayo and Tomé Denounced as Criminals
The commission of electoral crimes denounced Padre Andrés Tamayo and Zelaya advisor Rasel Tomé as criminals for having committed the crime of calling on the Honduran electorate to boycott the November 29 elections. The denunciation to the Public Prosecutor's office cited them as saying "if there is no restitution of President Manuel Zelaya there will be no election." The denunciation pretends (deliberate word choice, because the charge appears fanciful under Honduran law) that their declarations have violated the clause of Article 209 of the Electoral Law that describes the penalties for "not permitting or obstructing the electoral organisms to occupy the public places necessary for their functioning". Of course, this is a denunciation, not an actual charge. Its up to the public prosecutor's office to decide if any actual crime has been committed.
Posted by rns at 3:56 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Andrés Tamayo, Rasel Tomé
Supreme Court Needs A Week
The Supreme Court met today in full, with all 15 members present to decide what to do about Congress's request for a report on the restitution of Manuel Zelaya as President. Surprisingly the first thing they did was meet with Evelio Reyes, minister of the Abundant Life evangelical church, and a coup supporter, who reportedly told them "nobody should lend themselves in this society, to arrangements above the law...justice serves the truth." El Heraldo's Minute by Minute column reports that they have formed a committee to formulate a reply to Congress's request. The committee is made up of justices Jorge Rivera Avilez (Chief Justice), Jacobo Cálix (Sala Penal), Carlos Cálix Vallecillo (Sala Penal), Oscar Fernando Chinchilla (Sala Constitucional) y Rosa de Lourdes Paz (Sala Laboral). The committee will deliver a report next Wednesday.
Posted by rns at 3:19 PM 0 comments Links to this post
Labels: Supreme Court, Tegucigalpa/San Jose Accord
Porfirio Lobo Sosa: Do Something
Honduras Held Hostage, Day 137

Porfirio Lobo Sosa complained yesterday because the OAS will not be sending election observers to the November 29 election. No one has more to lose in this election than Lobo Sosa. He is the front runner, the one expected to win the election and inherit this mess. He said, "There is a reality, the 29 of November we have elections, the process must be transparent, it will be large because the people are very intelligent and the people know that this political crisis is contributing greatly to the suffering today."

Unfortunately for Lobo Sosa, Micheletti is betting everything on the international governments recognizing the elections as "free, transparent, and fair," something that the international community is nearly unanimous in rejecting.

Lobo Sosa recognizes this. He says "the international countries are holding this country hostage because they have frozen aid to put pressure on the discord that there is on high and that which came from it."

But then Lobo Sosa gets it wrong, saying "I have told them, amd what I insisted, is that they have to understand that they have to be in solidarity and that they shouldn't punish the Honduran people, punishing the poor by freezing projects, and now they want to punish them prohibiting that they go to elections....what's important to me is that finally the Honduran people pronounce."

No one wants to punish the Honduran people, and Lobo Sosa understands that, so his stance is disingenuous. The international community does not want to prohibit the Honduran people from having an election; they want them to have a "fair, free, and transparent" election, and the conditions for that are not present as long as the de facto government rules Honduras.

Lobo Sosa could solve this, as a pragmatic politician, by using pressure, behind the scenes, to push Congress to act, but instead sits on his hands and complains. Congress, especially Saavedra, and Micheletti, are Lobo Sosa's worst enemies right now. He could gain prestige by bringing about an end to the international crisis by simply pressuring his Nationalist colleagues to call the Congress into an extraordinary session, but he chooses not to. He doesn't have to coordinate how they will vote, but merely to get them to act to move things forward, but he fails to act.

Instead, Lobo Sosa asks the Verification Commission to act, to pronounce on who is responsible for the state of the accord, and what needs to happen.

Sorry, Porfirio Lobo Sosa, that's already happened, or haven't you read what Ricardo Lagos has to say about what Micheletti did to sabotage the agreement?

So yes, as you say "here there is a reality, November 29 nothing is going to keep the people from going to the polls"-- nothing except apathy and the perception of illegitimacy. In 2005, 45% of the people didn't vote for a candidate for President. Even fewer voted for Congress. What percentage of people will fail to vote this time around?

You're going to win, so why not act to ensure people think you're legitimate?

Move Congress to call a session and vote on Zelaya's restitution. Make yourself a hero.