Honduran Accord Solidifies Coup D'Etat Rule
On October 29, Honduran coup d'etat "president" Roberto Micheletti announced that:
"....a few minutes ago I authorized my negotiating team to sign a final agreement" to let Congress and the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ) decide whether or not deposed President Manuel Zelaya may return to office and complete the remaining weeks of his term, expiring on January 27. If he does, will it matter?
Zelaya is a wealthy businessman, a member of the right-wing Liberal Party (PL), a former National Congress Deputy from 1985 - 1998, a former PL Minister for Investment, and president from January 27, 2006 to when he was deposed on June 28.
His 2005 presidential campaign was largely on a law-and-order platform with pledges that, if elected, he'd address Honduras' crime problem with more police programs against and reeducation ones for violent international and local street gang members.
Zelaya also joined Venezuela's Bolivarian Alternative of the Americas (ALBA) based on fair, not one-sided "free" trade; complementarity, not competition; solidarity, not domination; cooperation, not exploitation; and respect for each nation's sovereign freedom from corporate control.
According to supporters like Alejandra Fernandez, a Honduran student, he also:
"raised the minimum wage, gave out free school lunches, provided milk for the babies and pensions for the elderly, distributed energy-saving light bulbs, decreased the price of public transportation, (and) made more scholarships available for students." In addition, he built roads and schools in rural areas. "That's why the elite classes can't stand him and why we want him back. This is really a class struggle." One the Resistance is detemined to win and hardliners aim to crush.
On June 28, dozens of Honduran soldiers stormed Zelaya's residence at night, arrested him in his pajamas at gunpoint, and exiled him to Costa Rica in violation of the 1982 Constitution that states:
"No Honduran may be expatriated nor delivered by the authorities to a foreign state," nor may a democratically elected leader be deposed.
On July 3, the Honduran army's top lawyer, Col. Herberth Bayardo Inestroza, admitted as much in a Miami Herald interview saying:
"We know there was a crime there. In the moment that we took him out of the country, in the way that he was taken out, there is a crime. Because of the circumstances of the moment this crime occurred, there is going to be a justification and cause for acquittal that will protect us."
He meant protection from the Constitution's Article 239 (crafted by a military government to subordinate civilians to repressive rule) that states:
"No citizen that has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or Vice-President.
Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years."
Also, Article 374 stating:
"It is not possible to reform, in any case, the preceding article, the present article, the constitutional articles referring to the form of government, to the national territory, to the presidential period, the prohibition to serve again as President of the Republic, the citizen who has performed under any title in consequence of which she/he cannot be President of the Republic in the subsequent period."
Zelaya didn't suggest it or break the law in calling for a simple non-binding June 28 "yes" or "no" referendum on one question:
"Do you think that the November 2009 general elections should include a fourth ballot box (the other three being for candidates) in order to make a decision about the creation of a National Constituent Assembly that would approve a new Constitution?"
The Honduran Congress and military opposed it. The CSJ illegally ruled it unconstitutional, ordered no distribution of ballot boxes, and threatened those doing it with 8 - 12 years in prison for "abuse of authority." The High Court and Congress are stacked with right-wing ideologues. In addition, the Council on Hemispheric Affairs calls the CSJ "one of the most corrupt institutions in Latin America."
So is the military whose officers from captain on up have been trained for decades at the infamous School of the Americas (SOA), renamed the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHISEC), where they're taught the latest ways to kill, maim, torture, oppress, exterminate poor and indigenous people, overthrow democratically elected governments, assassinate targeted leaders, suppress popular resistance when it erupts, and work cooperatively with Washington to solidify hard-right rule, intolerant of progressive change - familiar tactics since June 28.
The day before, the military set off a chain of events. Reports said Zelaya fired Joint Chiefs Head General Romeo Vasquez Velasquez for refusing to distribute ballot boxes. He denied it. Velasquez may have resigned on his own. So did Defense Minister Edmundo Orellana and several military commanders. Nonetheless, the CSJ and Congress called Velasquez's dismissal illegal. Military forces deployed around Tegucigalpa, surrounded the Presidential Palace, and took over the airport and borders in advance of the planned coup, made in Washington, of course, like numerous others for decades.
Zelaya, nonetheless, ordered ballot boxes distributed. Congress recommended removing him. The Federal Prosecutor's Office announced that anyone setting up polling stations or promoting the referendum would be prosecuted. Anti-Zelaya forces urged a boycott.
Right-wing media hype called the vote illegal, a ploy to re-elect Zelaya, a way to shift his conservative Liberal Party far-left, a scheme to solidify his Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) membership and let Chavez make Honduras socialist. In a pro forma June 29 pronouncement, the CSJ reinstated Velasquez. The Catholic Church backed the coup government. Months of terror followed, including:
- imposing military rule, martial law, and a state of siege;
- deploying combat troops on city streets;
- suspending civil liberties, including habeas, the right of assembly, free movement and free expression;
- committing thousands of human rights violations;
- thousands more illegal arrests;
- dozens of killings, beatings, kidnappings, and nationwide intimidation;
- according to the human rights NGO Comite de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos en Honduras (Committee of Relatives of the Disappeared - COFADEH), torturing and sodomizing men and gang-raping women;
- reactivating the infamous Battalion 316, the CIA-created death squads that disappeared, tortured, and exterminated regime opponents in the 1980s;
- silencing the independent media; and
- harassing and arresting Honduran and foreign journalists; at least one was murdered, Gabriel Fino Noreiga on July 3.
Barack Obama ignored the worst of state terror in support of coup d'etat rule - no surprise from a president calling the fraudulent Afghan election "a step forward...to advance democracy, peace and justice....in "the interests of the Afghan people (and) a reflection of a commitment to the rule of law."
Post-coup on Veneuela's TV Telesur, Zelaya called his ouster:
a "kidnapping. An extortion of the Honduran democratic system. And I will ask the presidents of the Americas, including the US president - I want to hear the US Ambassador Hugo Llorens in Tegucigalpa if they are behind this, and if not, clear it up, because if the US is not behind this coup, they won't be able to stay there forty-eight hours."
For over 100 years, Washington repeatedly intervened in Central and Latin American affairs - by invasions, bombings, occupations, assassinations, countless episodes of destabilization and election rigging, and numerous coup d'etats against leaders it wished to depose.
Zelaya was the latest, confirmed by the Obama administration's refusal to cut diplomatic ties, halt military aid, impose sanctions as US law requires, or call the ouster a coup.
On October 30, New York Times writers Ginger Thompson and Elisabeth Malkin headlined, "Deal Set to Restore Ousted Honduran President." To what given the agreed on terms. On October 29, AP reported that:
"opposing political factions resumed talks (today in hopes of reaching a deal) to end the power crisis that has paralyzed the country" since June 28. "The two sides returned to the negotiating table a day after visiting US diplomats urged both factions to be more flexible and find a solution (ahead of) scheduled" November 29 presidential, parliamentary, and municipal elections.
Terms of the So-Called Agreement/Accord
Signed on October 30, it's for Congress and the CSJ to approve it. Titled "Accord for National Reconciliation and the Strengthening of Democracy in Democracy," it's as Orwellian as "War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."
Post-coup, The Hill.com reported that the far-right Business Council of Latin America (CEAL) hired former Bill Clinton special counsel, Lanny Davis' firm, Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, to lobby Congress and conduct a supportive PR campaign for its leaders. Lobbyist Bennett Ratcliff was enlisted to work with Davis, and according to an unnamed source in The New York Times, the Micheletti government hasn't made a move without first consulting him.
These men, their associates, and legal staff prepared the Accord, the way business sectors craft all Washington legislation affecting them.
It begins saying:
"We, Honduran citizens, men and women, convinced of the need to strengthen the rule of law, protect our Constitution and the laws of our Republic, deepen democracy and ensure a climate of peace and tranquility for our people, have carried out an intense and frank process of political dialogue to seek a peaceful and negotiated solution to the crisis in which our country has been submerged in recent months."
Terms include:
- Forming a "National Unity and Reconciliation Government."
Fact Check: Only hardliners need apply, and if reinstated, Zelaya will finish his term as an impotent puppet head of state. - Renouncing "a Call for a National Constituent Assembly and Amending the Unamendable Articles of the Constitution." Fact Check: According to Article 5 of the 2006 Honduran "Civil Participation Act," government officials may hold non-binding inquiries (referenda) to determine popular support for proposed measures. Gauging sentiment for a National Constituent Assembly for a new Constitution is legal. Illegally, Washington and Honduran hardliners stopped it.
- The coup regime calls on Hondurans to "peacefully participate in the coming general election and to avoid any type of demonstrations that oppose the elections of their results, or promote insurrection, unlawful conduct, civil disobedience or other acts that could result in violent confrontations or transgressions of the law." Fact Check: Honduran coup opponents called for an election boycott. On September 15, so did Zelaya saying:
"One cannot talk about the elections where there are no guarantees that the will of the people is going to be respected."
On October 24, 300 members of the two dominant parties, the National Party (PL) and Liberal Party (PL), announced they'll refuse to participate. Will they now after the Accord was signed? If some reports are accurate, Zelaya capitulated to coup d'etat terms by calling the Accord a democratic "triumph" - even though trade unionist independent candidate and National Resistance Front member Carlos Reyes and legislative deputy Cesar Ham of the small leftist Democratic Unification (UD) party dropped out of the presidential race on September 9. Most of the remaining PN and PL candidates are conservative hardliners who'll assure no possibility of democratic change. The elections will fill 2,896 positions, including the presidency, all 128 National Congress deputies, 20 others to represent Honduras in the Central American Parliament (PARLACEN), 298 mayors and another 2,000 municipal officials. - The Honduran military and police will be "placed at the disposition of the Supreme Electoral Tribunal from one month before the general elections for the purpose of guaranteeing the free exercise of suffrage, the custody, transport and surveillance of electoral materials and other security aspects of the process." Fact Check: Hardline security forces will subvert democratic change. Hondurans will be disenfranchised if they back the charade. In betraying his supporters, Zelaya capitulated, meaning he'll support coup d'etat authority.
- The CSJ and Congress will "resolve the issue regarding 'restoring possession of the Executive Power to its status prior to June 28 until conclusion (of) the current governmental period on January 27, 2010." Fact Check: Two hard-right bodies will decide IF Zelaya is reinstated and on what terms. He'll be impotent by agreeing to the charade.
- A "Verification Commission" will be created "to verify commitments made under this Accord and those deriving from it....composed of two (coup lackey) members of the international community and two members of the national community, the last two to be chosen, one each, by" Micheletti and Zelaya. Fact Check: Staunch Washington ally, Ricardo Lagos, former Chilean president, and Obama's Labor Secretary, Hilda Solis, will represent the international community along with Jorge Eduardo Idiaquez, Zelaya's UN ambassador, and coup lackey, Arturo Corrales Alvarez. A three to one edge assures no chance for democratic change.
- The coup regime calls for "Normalization of Relations between the Republic of Honduras and the International Community" to restore the status quo. Fact Check: The regime wants international recognition for its illegitimacy, continued hardline policies, and apparently will get it.
- The Verification Commission will handle "differences regarding interpretation or application of this Accord..." Fact Check: Hardliners want rubber stamp approval. Commission members chosen will assure it.
- The Accord is effective on signing. The "following calender for compliance" was agreed on:
- On October 30, signing the Accord into effect, delivering it to Congress, and having it rule on Point 5, "Regarding the Executive Power."
- On November 2 or no later than November 5, forming the Verification Commission and establishing the "National Unity and Reconciliation Government."
- On January 27, "celebrating the transfer of government."
The Accord was agreed to by Micheletti and Zelaya representatives, Thomas Shannon, the former US Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs and Obama's yet-to-be confirmed ambassador to Brazil. Ostensibly, it will return Zelaya to office in exchange for international support for subverting democracy and continuity under far-right officials taking over in January.
It also assures his impotence. Hardliners will be empowered. Constitutional change will be prohibited. Democracy will be subverted. Zelaya must distance himself from Hugo Chavez. Perhaps other regional center-leftists as well. Coup plotters will get amnesty, and Zelaya may still be tried for treason for ordering a legitimate referendum.
With elections in a few weeks, hardliners may stall, obstruct, and from what Micheletti advisor, Marcia Facusse de Villeda, told Bloomberg News maintain the status quo until new officials take office in January.
"Zelaya won't be restored," she said. Further, "just by signing this agreement we already have the recognition of the international community for the elections." From Washington for sure according to Thomas Shannon. On November 4, Al Jazeera reported that he:
"told CNN en Espanol (on November 3) that the US will recognise the November 29 elections even if the Honduran congress votes against Zelaya's return to power before the vote."
No surprise, and according to Micheletti aide, Arturo Corrales, Congress isn't in session so approving the Accord will come "after the elections." Yet, according to hondurasthisweek.com, the congressional Executive Committee (Junta Directiva) met on November 3 to evaluate the Accord, but what's next is anyone's guess as Congress president, Jose Alfredo Saavedra, hasn't convened an extraordinary legislative session to decide on reinstatement. Nor has the CSJ ruled, yet the November 5 midnight deadline came and passed.
Still holed up at the Brazilian embassy under threat of arrest, Zelaya told Radio Globo: "There's no sense in deceiving Hondurans." His negotiator, Jorge Reina, said the Accord is dead because Congress failed to vote by the agreed on date and added:
"The de facto regime has failed to live up to the promise that, by this date (November 5), the national (unity) government would be installed. And by law, it should be presided by the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya." Reina accused Micheletti of arranging "a great electoral fraud this November. We completely do not recognize this electoral process. Elections under a dictatorship are a fraud for the people."
According to AP:
"Shortly before midnight, Micheletti announced that a unity government had been created even though Zelaya had not submitted his own list of members. Micheletti said the new government was composed of candidates proposed by political parties and civic groups."
In other words, mostly hardliners to solidify coup d'etat rule even though earlier hondurasthisweek.com cited a November 1 Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia report saying Tegucigalpa diplomatic sources told the paper that Thomas Shannon forced Zelaya's compliance or risk his son, Hector's, prosecution on drugs trafficking. He lives in America. Zelaya complied, but as of November 6 no longer. Nonetheless, events are fast moving with likely new developments in the hours and days ahead.
At issue is how the international community will react if a fake national unity government is established and elections precede a vote on Zelaya's reinstatement.
The Organization of American States' (OAS) Secretary-General, Jose Miguel Insulza, said he's creating a "mission" to assure compliance, meaning Zelaya must be reinstated once Congress and the CSJ agree. However, no deadlines are set, so hardliners may run out the clock and declare victory. They've already won even though The New York Times reported that:
"As news of the agreement spread, residents poured from their homes and workplaces across Tegucigalpa, the capital, to celebrate. Jubilation broke out in streets," with more likely if Zelaya's reinstated. It's not assured. Neither is what's next if it comes. What if delay and obstruction follow, and what if Venezuelan lawyer, author, and close Chavez confidant, Eva Golinger, is right about more Washington-instigated "coups in Paraguay, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Venezuela, where subversion, counterinsurgency and destabilization increase daily."
Latin America is being more militarized, the result of Colombian president Alvaro Uribe giving the Pentagon access to seven new military bases with US forces currently on nine others, supplemented by the April 2008's Fourth Fleet's reactivation after a 60 year hiatus. Now the Honduran coup suggests other regimes outside the US orbit or not enough in it may be targeted. Add Bolivia to Golinger's list and still more if center-left regimes take over.
In an October 1 interview, National Resistance Front leader, Juan Barahona, said:
"We will not stop. We will continue to be against the coup until the last day they are in power. After the June coup, the level of consciousness has greatly risen. There has been a parting of waters. This is a struggle between classes: on one side the exploited people, and on the other the capitalists, the large capitalists that dominate this country. (It's a) struggle of the poor against the rich...." Overwhelming public sentiment wants a referendum calling for a National Constituent Assembly to draft a new Constitution.
Will popular resistance demand it? On November 5, two of its leaders appeared in Washington at an event to restore democracy and human rights in Honduras - Bertha Oliva, COFADEH founder, and Jessica Sanchez of the National Alliance of Honduran Feminists in Resistance.
On November 4, a London protest was held at the US Embassy for the same purpose. It also stressed "end(ing) all US economic, political and military support to" the Honduran dictatorship. Speakers included trade unionist leader Tony Burke, other activists, and Jeremy Corbyn MP.
The UK Trades Union Congress (TUC), "the voice of Britain at work (with) 58 affiliated unions representing nearly seven million working people," called on MP David Miliband, Secretary of State Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, "to increase pressure" on hardliners "to restore democracy and to strongly condemn the series of human rights violations" post-coup.
The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), representing 170 million workers in 158 countries, unanimously passed a resolution at its recent Berlin General Council meeting calling for:
- suspending Honduran trade preferences and financial aid and cooperation until democracy is fully restored; and
- not cooperating with the bogus November elections by sending observers.
On October 31, the National Resistance Front told Hondurans:
- "We celebrate the upcoming restoration of President Manuel Zelaya Rosales as a popular victory over the narrow interests of the coup oligarchy;"
- the Accord mandates "returning the holder of executive power to its pre-June 28 state (and assuring) a democratic framework in which the people can exercise their right to transform society;"
- the Accord must "be processed in an expedited fashion by the National Congress; we alert all our comrades....to pressure for the immediate compliance;"
- "We reiterate that a National Constituent Assembly is an unrenounceable aspiration of the Honduran people and a non-negotiable right for which we will continue struggling in the streets, until we achieve the re-founding of our society to convert it into one that is just, egalitarian and truly democratic....(After over four months) of struggle, nobody here surrenders!"
One of its leaders, Rafeal Alegria, told Prensa Latina: "The people will not approve the electoral farce the putschists are preparing. The only solution to the conflict is the restitution of democratic legality and the president elected by the people."
Key now is follow-through, persistence, and staying mobilized for the long haul. Popular victories come only at great cost after years of struggle the way noted journalist IF Stone explained:
"The only kinds of fights worth fighting are those you are going to lose, because somebody has to fight them and lose and lose and lose until someday, somebody who believes as you do wins...."
It's for Hondurans and oppressed people everywhere to understand, persevere, and endure, no matter what.
http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2009/110609Lendman.shtml
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"National Resistance Against the Coup d’Etat Announces Boycott of November 29 Honduras Elections
Coup Regime’s Noncompliance with the October 30 Accord Renders Last Week’s Agreement Moot
TEGUCIGALPA, HONDURAS: Hundreds of people have congregated daily outside the Honduran National Congress to pressure its members (known as ‘Diputados,’ or Deputies) to finally reinstate President Manuel Zelaya.
... the National Resistance Front Against the Coup d’Etat published this statement:
The National Resistance Front against the Coup d’Etat announces to the Honduran population and the international community:
Whereas:
1.That during 131 consecutive days of the struggle, we have pressured for a peaceful resolution to the political crisis that our country has lived resulting from the coup d’état perpetrated by the Honduran Oligarchy. In this period we have supported the initiatives that have been driven by various national and international sectors, maintaining three fundamental demands: a) the return of institutional order with the restitution of the legitimate president Manuel Zelaya Rosales, b) respect for our sovereign right to install a National Constituent Assembly that brings together the country and c) punishment for the violators of human rights.
2.That the call of the agreement Tegucigalpa-San Jose contains the priority element the return of constitutional order and literally states its purpose as “to bring back the title of the Executive Power to the state previous to the that of June 28 until the conclusion of the actual governing period, January 27, 2010”
3.That the National Congress, coauthor of the breaking of constitutional order on the June 28, is using delaying tactics, in not wanting to convene the complete assembly in order to repeal the decree that installed the de facto regime.
4.That the OEA and the government of the United States, who we consider accomplice of the military coup d’état, do not represent our interests in the definitive exit of the people involved in the coup d’état out of power.
So we resolve:
1.If today, Thursday, November 5, no later than midnight President Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales is not reinstated to his position, the National Resistance Front against the Coup d’Etat will not recognize the electoral process and its results.
2.We alert all the organizations in the resistance on a national level so that in case President Zelaya is not reinstated in the established period to be ready to execute the actions of negating the farse elections.
3.We call on the international community to maintain the position that the de facto regime and the elections of November 29 are illegitimate.
We resist and we will be victorious!
Tegucigalpa, M.D.C. 5 of November 2009
Many resistance members have commented that the same Congress that invented the President’s resignation letter last June is now being trusted to clean up the mess.
...The US will now have to answer to the international community – including the Organization of American States (OAS) – as the only government that says it might recognize the Nov 29 elections in Honduras."
See: http://narconews.com/Issue61/article3917.html
"Reporting throughout Honduras over the past 118 days of resistance to the coup d’etat, we heard the same thing from the people on the ground wherever we went: That whether or not President Manuel Zelaya returns to the post he was elected to serve, that whether or not “elections” happen on November 29, that whether or not the world views them as legitimate, all of that is secondary to the people’s primary demand: for a new Constitution and a constituent assembly (“constituente”) of elected representatives from every sector of society to write it democratically.
A little bird flew by my window this morning - the date the "talks" for a negotiated solution to the Honduras coup definitively broke down and ended - and suggested the following strategy idea, one that has been under discussion in important corners of the Honduran civil resistance: Why wait for an illegitimate regime’s permission to hold the referendum that the coup was designed to stop?
The coup was held on June 28 precisely to stop a non-binding referendum – one that asked if Hondurans wanted the right to vote for or against a new Constitution – but the regime’s own insistence on holding faux “elections” on November 29 inadvertently provides the people with the opportunity to do the very thing the coup was intended to stop: To put up ballot boxes outside of every “official” polling place and survey the people on that original question.
Now that the Honduran civil resistance and its diverse social movements are so much better organized in every town and city than ever before, the little bird asked, why not utilize the November 29 date of the regime’s sham “elections” to hold a real referendum? The suggestion is to place a “First Ballot Box” (“primera urna”), outside of every official polling place, that asks the first question anew: “Do you favor convening a national Constituent Assembly to democratically write a new Constitution for the Republic of Honduras?” “Yes” or “No?”
That little bird must have likewise carefully listened to the voices from below.
We heard it - and reported it to you - from the northeastern cities of Trujillo, Tocoa, and Saba and the nearby farms of Guadalupe Tepayac. We heard it throughout our reporting from coastal La Ceiba and from the Afro-Honduran and Garifuna communities throughout that coast. From the popular barrios of San Pedro Sula and the highway blockades of Comayagua the same central demand was on everyone’s lips: ¡Constituente! From the colonias in resistance throughout greater Tegucigalpa, ¡Constituente! From the western mountains of Santa Rosa de Copán to the fields and jungle outposts of Olancho, the same demand: ¡Constituente! That is what a majority of the Honduran people seek and that is precisely what the coup d’etat – supported by only 17 percent of the public, according to the COIMER & OP poll – was executed to try to stop.
It was this yearning for a new Constitution – and President Zelaya’s endorsement of the people’s desire to vote on it – that provoked the coup d’etat on June 28. That was the date that Hondurans were scheduled to vote on a non-binding referendum – a “consulta” – about whether they would like to cast ballots on November 29 into a “fourth ballot box” (“cuarta urna”) for or against such a constituent assembly to democratically remake the Constitution and the nation.
The coup on that date not only illegally removed the President from the country, it not only shut down the two most trusted TV and radio news networks in the land, but it also unleashed a wave of violent military and police attacks on the referendum ballots and boxes throughout every municipality in the country to prevent that non-binding consulta from happening. Why did they attack cardboard boxes? Because the oligarchs and the minority 17 percent of Hondurans that are with them knew full well that the results of that referendum would have demonstrated that an overwhelming of majority of Hondurans want to vote to construct a new Constitution. And that national expression of popular will would have created unstoppable momentum toward that goal.
And since the current Constitution – drafted in 1982 by those in power, including current coup dictator Roberto Micheletti – allows for a fixed playing field in which the few control the resources and freedoms of the many, the one thing the coup regime can’t tolerate is that the Constitution be rewritten to become one that is of, by and for the people. That small group in power knows very well that the majority of the people no longer want the few to decide everything for them."
More at: http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield?page=1
More of the Same in Latin America
There were great hopes in Latin America when President Obama was elected. U.S. standing in the region had reached a low point under George W. Bush, and all of the left governments expressed optimism that Obama would take Washington’s policy in a new direction.
These hopes have been dashed. President Obama has continued the Bush policies and in some cases has done worse.
The military overthrow of democratically elected President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras on June 28 has become a clear example of Obama’s failure in the hemisphere. There were signs that something was amiss in Washington when the first statement from the White House failed to even criticize the coup. It was the only such statement from a government to take a neutral position.
By Mark Weisbrot
New York Times
Wednesday, Aug 12, 2009
Honduras: First, depose a president. Second, hire a lobbyist
With the entire world turning their backs on them and President Zelaya in the Brasilian Embassy in Tegucigalpa, the scum who committed the coup in Honduras are trying to dig in. They're hoping the U.S. lobbyists they've hired will bring enough pressure to bear on Washington to gain support for their illegal government. The US government's reaction will be interesting indeed.
...Costing at least $400,000 so far, according to lobbying registration records, the campaign has involved law firms and public relations agencies with close ties to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Senator John McCain, a leading Republican voice on foreign affairs.
It has also drawn support from several former high-ranking officials who were responsible for setting United States policy in Central America in the 1980s and ’90s, when the region was struggling to break with the military dictatorships and guerrilla insurgencies that defined the cold war. Two decades later, those former officials — including Otto Reich, Roger Noriega and Daniel W. Fisk —
...Mr. Reich, who served in key Latin America posts for President Ronald Reagan and President George W. Bush, said he had not lobbied officially for any Honduran group. But he said he had used his connections to push the agenda of the de facto government, led by Roberto Micheletti, because he believed that the Obama administration had made a mistake.
And Mr. Fisk, whose political career has included stints on the National Security Council and as a deputy assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs under Mr. Bush, had been promoting the Micheletti government’s case until two weeks ago as an aide to retired Senator Mel Martinez of Florida.
In addition to the support of such cold war veterans — and partly because of it — the de facto government has mobilized the support of a determined group of Republican legislators, led by Senator Jim DeMint of South Carolina. They are holding up two State Department appointments as a way of pressing the Obama administration to lift sanctions against the country.
...Congressional aides said that less than 10 days after Mr. Zelaya was ousted, Mr. Noriega and Lanny J. Davis, a confidant of Mrs. Clinton and a lobbyist for a Honduran business council, organized a meeting for supporters of the de facto government with members of the Senate.
Mr. Fisk, who attended the meeting, said he was stunned by the turnout. “I had never seen eight senators in one room to talk about Latin America in my entire career,” he said.
As President Obama imposed increasingly tougher sanctions on Honduras, the lobbying intensified. The Cormac Group, run by a former aide to Senator McCain, John Timmons, signed on, records show, as did Chlopak, Leonard, Schechter & Associates, a public relations firm.
By Ginger Thompson and Ron Nixon
NYT
Thursday, Oct 8, 2009
"Now, there are some elements of the CIA that could have been involved. When they took me by plane to Costa Rica, it was a short flight, but the plane made a stop at the Palmerola air base to refuel.
"Palmerola is a base administered by Honduran and U.S. troops. If it was a short flight, some 40 minutes, why did they have to refuel at Palmerola base?"
Patricia Valle, who served as Zelaya's deputy foreign minister, reiterated those suspicions Saturday, although she gave no evidence that American personnel at the base interacted with the Honduran military officials on the plane or that they even knew Zelaya was there. She said Zelaya stayed on the plane during the stop.
"Zelaya was taken to Palmerola," Valle told the AP. "The United States was involved in the coup against Zelaya."
Palmerola was used by the United States during the Central American civil wars of the 1980s."
http://www.philly.com/inquirer/world_us/20090817_U_S__military_denies_Honduras_coup_role.html
Honduran Coup: The U.S. Connection
The story most U.S. readers are getting about the coup is that Zelaya — an ally of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez — was deposed because he tried to change the constitution to keep himself in power.
...That story is a massive distortion of the facts. All Zelaya was trying to do is to put a non-binding referendum on the ballot calling for a constitutional convention, a move that trade unions, indigenous groups, and social activist organizations had long been lobbying for. The current constitution was written by the Honduran military in 1982, and the one-term limit allows the brass-hats to dominate the politics of the country. Since the convention would have been held in November, the same month as the upcoming presidential elections, there was no way Zelaya could have remained in office in any case. The most he could have done was to run four years from now.
And while Zelaya is indeed friendly with Chavez, he is at best a liberal reformer whose major accomplishment was raising the minimum wage. "What Zelaya has done has been little reforms," Rafael Alegria, a leader of Via Campesina, told the Mexican daily La Jornada. "He isn't a socialist or a revolutionary, but these reforms, which didn't harm the oligarchy at all, have been enough for them to attack him furiously."
One of those "little reforms" was aimed at ensuring public control of the Honduran telecommunications industry, which may well have been the trip-wire that triggered the coup.
The first hint that something was afoot was a suit brought by Venezuelan lawyer Robert Carmona-Borjas claiming that Zelaya was part of a bribery scheme involving the state-run telecommunication company Hondutel.
Carmona-Borjas has a rap-sheet that dates back to the April 2002 coup against Chavez. He drew up the notorious "Carmona decrees," a series of draconian laws aimed at suspending the Venezuelan constitution and suppressing any resistance to the coup. As Chavez supporters poured into the streets and the plot unraveled, Carmona-Borjas fled to Washington, DC. He took a post at George Washington University and brought Iran-Contra plotters Otto Reich and Elliott Abrams to teach his class on "Political Management in Latin America." He also became vice-president of the right-wing Arcadia Foundation, which lobbies for free-market policies. Weeks before the June 28 Honduran coup, Carmona-Borjas barnstormed the country accusing Zelaya of collaborating with narco-traffickers.
Carmona-Borjas' colleague, Reich, a Cuban American with ties to right-wing factions all over Latin America and former assistant secretary of State for hemispheric affairs under George W. Bush, has been accused by the Honduran Black Fraternal Organization of "undeniable involvement" in the coup.
This is hardly surprising. Reich was nailed by a 1987 congressional investigation for using public funds to engage in propaganda during the Reagan administration's war on Nicaragua. He is also a fierce advocate for Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles, both implicated in the bombing of a Cuban airliner in 1973 that killed all 73 on board.
Reich is also a ferocious critic of Zelaya. In a recent piece in the Weekly Standard, he urged the Obama administration not to support "strongman" Zelaya because it "would put the United States clearly in the same camp as Cuba's Castro brothers, Venezuela's Chavez, and other regional delinquents."
One of the charges that Reich levels at Zelaya is that the Honduran president is supposedly involved with bribes paid out by the state-run telecommunications company Hondutel. Zelaya is threatening to file a defamation suit over the accusation.
Reich's charges against Hondutel are hardly happenstance, as he is a former AT&T lobbyist and served as Senator John McCain's (R-AZ) Latin American advisor during the senator's 2008 presidential campaign. McCain has deep ties with telecom giants AT&T, MCI, and Qualcomm and, according to Nikolas Kozloff, author of Hugo Chavez: Oil, Politics and the Challenge of the United States, "has acted to protect and look out for the political interests of the telecoms on Capitol Hill."
AT&T, McCain's second largest donor, also generously funds the International Republican Institute (IRI), which has warred with Latin American regimes that have resisted telecommunications privatization. According to Kozloff, "President Zelaya was a known to be a fierce critic of telecommunications privatization."
When Venezuelan coup leaders went to Washington a month before their failed effort to oust Chavez, IRI footed the bill. Reich, as then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's special envoy to the Western Hemisphere, met with some of those leaders.
Republicans in Congress have accused the Obama administration of being "soft" on Zelaya. Sen. Jim DeMint (SC) protested the White House's support of the Honduran president holding up votes for administration nominees for the ambassador to Brazil and an assistant secretary of state. Meanwhile, Zelaya's return was unanimously supported by the UN General Assembly, the European Union, and the Organization of American States.
But meddling in Honduras is a bipartisan undertaking.
"If you want to understand who is the real power behind the [Honduran] coup, you need to find out who is paying Lanny Davis," says Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and current president of the Center for International Policy. Davis, best known as the lawyer who represented Bill Clinton during his impeachment trial, has been lobbying members of Congress and testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee in support of the coup.
According to Roberto Lovato, an associate editor at New American Media, Davis represents the Honduran chapter of CEAL, the Business Council of Latin America, which strongly backed the coup. Davis told Lovato, "I'm proud to represent businessmen who are committed to the rule of law."
But White says the coup had more to do with profits than law. "Coups happen because very wealthy people want them and help to make them happen, people who are used to seeing the country as a money machine and suddenly see social legislation on behalf of the poor as a threat to their interests," says White. "The average wage of a worker in free trade zones is 77 cents per hour." According to the World Bank, 59% of Hondurans live below the poverty line.
The United States is also involved in the coup through a network of agencies that funnel money and training to anti-government groups. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contribute to right-wing organizations that supported the coup, including the Peace and Democracy Movement and the Civil Democratic Union. Many of the officers that bundled Zelaya off to San Jose were trained at the Western Hemispheric Institute for Security Cooperation, the former "School for the Americas" that has seen torturers and coup leaders from all over Latin America pass through its doors.
The Obama administration condemned the coup, but when Zelaya journeyed to the Honduran-Nicaragua border, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton denounced him for being "provocative." It was a strange statement, since the State Department said nothing about a report by the Committee of Disappeared Detainees in Honduras charging 1,100 human rights violations by the coup regime, including detentions, assaults, and murder.
Human rights violations by the coup government have been condemned by the Inter-American Commission for Human Rights, the International Observer Mission, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protest Journalists, and Reporters Without Borders.
Davis claims that the coup was a "legal" maneuver to preserve democracy. But that's a hard argument to make, given some of its architects. One is Fernando Joya, a former member of Battalion 316, a paramilitary death squad. Joya fled the country after being charged with kidnapping and torturing several students in the 1980s, but he has now resurfaced as a "special security advisor" to the coup makers. He recently gave a TV interview that favorably compared the 1973 Chilean coup to the June 28 Honduran coup.
According to Greg Grandin, a history professor at New York University, the coup makers also included the extremely right-wing Catholic organization, Opus Dei, whose roots go back to the fascist regime of Spanish caudillo Francisco Franco.
In the old days, when the United States routinely overthrew governments that displeased it, the Marines would have gone in, as they did in Guatemala and Nicaragua, or the CIA would have engineered a coup by the local elites. No one has accused U.S. intelligence of being involved in the Honduran coup, and American troops in the country are keeping a low profile. But the fingerprints of U.S. institutions like the NED, USAID, and School for the Americas — plus bipartisan lobbyists, powerful corporations, and dedicated Cold War warriors — are all over the June takeover.
http://www.fpif.org/fpiftxt/6329
"A top aide to Honduras' ousted president accused the United States of involvement in the coup, saying Saturday that the plane that flew Manuel Zelaya into exile stopped to refuel at an airfield where hundreds of U.S. troops are based.
Patricia Valle, the deputy foreign minister of the deposed government, said the Honduran military plane carrying Zelaya took off from the capital's Toncontin airport, then stopped for fuel at the Soto Cano air base before heading to Costa Rica. She said Zelaya did not get off the plane during the stop.
Soto Cano, also known as Palmerola, is a Honduran air base that houses at least 500 U.S. troops who conduct counter-narcotics operations and other missions in Central America.
Valle charged that the stop at Palmerola showed U.S. officials at some level were complicit in the June 28 coup, although she offered no evidence that American personnel at the base interacted with the Honduran military officials on the plane or that they even knew Zelaya was there.
"Zelaya was taken to Palmerola," Valle told The Associated Press. "The United States was involved in the coup against Zelaya."
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=8336230
and,
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,539820,00.html
"Honduran crisis 'threatens democracy'
Latin America faces wave of coups if world fails to take notice
A rash of military coups could be triggered across Latin America if the world fails to stand up to the illegal regime in Honduras, a close aide of the ousted president Manuel Zelaya warned yesterday.
"The fate of Honduras is not just the fate of Honduras, but of the Latin American continent," Mr Zelaya's special adviser Allan Fajaro told The Independent. "Dark forces," he said, were watching to see how the crisis ends. "If we resolve this constitutionally they will know they too have to respect democracy. If not, these dark forces will know they have a green light and the continent will become an erupting volcano. That will be a very bad outcome, not only for our continent, but for Europe and the world."
The political crisis in Honduras began four months ago when Mr Zelaya, the democratically elected president, was taken from his bed at gunpoint and flown out of the country by the military. A US-brokered power-sharing deal which should have returned Mr Zelaya to his post, at least until elections on 29 November, collapsed last week after Roberto Micheletti, who seized power after the coup, reneged by forming a caretaker government without him.
Mr Zelaya, forced to take refuge inside the Brazilian embassy in the Honduran capital Tegucigalpa, is now calling for a boycott of the elections. Against a background of wavering support in Washington, he wants European governments to issue a clear warning that they will not recognise the results.
His special adviser, who is touring EU capitals to plead for increased pressure, urged Britain to sponsor a joint European initiative warning of diplomatic isolation and the suspension of aid."But what is most urgently needed is a clear and forceful statement from Britain and its European partners, that elections under this regime will not be accepted", Mr Fajaro said in London. "This would send a powerful message to the coup leaders. We are asking the British government to state forcefully and clearly that they will not recognise elections conducted in this repressive and illegitimate context."
The Obama administration sparked outrage from its allies in Latin America and across the world last week after it appeared to recognise the coup regime by signalling it could accept the legitimacy of the elections, even if Mr Zelaya is not first reinstated. Neither Mr Zelaya nor Mr Micheletti are candidates in the election. The reputation of the Obama administration could be damaged by its handling of the crisis he said, adding that conservative figures with links to the coup leaders had successfully lobbied the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Mr Fajaro said tensions could spill over into violence and even civil war. But there was also a risk of a domino effect across Latin America, with anti-government forces in Paraguay and Bolivia already threatening military takeovers. Mr Zelaya's only crime, in the eyes of the "putschists", he said, was that he reduced poverty and inequality. "The oligarchy, who perpetrated this coup, feared him and they are composed of just 10 families. He's in this situation because he did not defend the interests of the elite."
Conditions inside the Brazilian embassy, where Mr Zelaya has been holed up since 21 September are "like a prison" he went on. "All his food is searched, even with bare hands. They have pumped noxious gases into the building, constant noise is blaring, the lights are on all night and we think they might be digging under the building. This is all to break his spirit but Manuel remains very strong. He knows he is fighting for democracy and helping to write history".
By Katherine Butler, Foreign Editor
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/honduran-crisis-threatens-
democracy-1819044.html
"Ousted President Zelaya Accuses US of Providing Cover for Coup
Tegucigalpa - Deposed Honduran president Manuel Zelaya has rejected any possibility of a deal to restore constitutional order in the two weeks before the next scheduled elections, local media reported. Zelaya, who was ousted by the military on June 28, informed US President Barack Obama in a letter Saturday that he would not accept any proposal to return him to office temporarily "to cover up the coup d'etat."
"This electoral process is illegal because it conceals the military coup and the de facto state of Honduras that does not guarantee free and fair citizen participation," he wrote.
"It is an anti-democratic electoral maneuver, repudiated by large parts of the population, to cover the material and intellectual authors of the the coup d'etat."
Zelaya also accused the US government of modifying its initial opposition to the coup, noting that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton had earlier told him the Obama administration would only recognize the new elections if Zelaya were restored to office first.
...Zelaya complained that the softened US position had allowed the de facto Honduran government of Roberto Micheletti and the National Congress to allow the clock to run out."
http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/294752,ousted-president-zelaya-accuses
-us-of-providing-cover-for-coup.html