Honduran Smoke-screen

Dec 02, 2009 Editorial

The Honduran political tragedy is fast deteriorating into a farce. Last June President Zelaya scheduled a referendum to ask Hondurans whether they supported the idea of a multi-term presidency. Is it not the essence of democracy to consult the people on such a question?
The army, however, deciding this was the beginning of the slippery slope to dictatorship, seized the President, exiled him out of the country and appointed his civilian rival to his Presidency.
President Obama’s call for the restoration – in line with that of the UN, OAS, Caricom, and most of individual Latin American countries – was especially noteworthy in light of the US’s past complicity in previous coups. The present Honduran army had very close links to the US. The US’s subsequent actions, unfortunately, did not match its President’s rhetoric and Zelaya had to resort to slipping back into the country and seeking refuge within the Brazilian embassy.
And then the military-appointed government decided to hold elections last Sunday. The UN, OAS, and Carter Centre and other bedrock electoral groups boycotted “the event” as the Hondurans dubbed it. The supporters of Zelaya also refused to participate. Even though the government claimed that there was a 61 per cent turnout, the Washington Post and leading Honduran newspaper El Tiempo reported that the independent group Fundación Hagamos Democracia stated that the number of voters was much lower – only 47.6 percent.
According to Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the reputable Centre for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) the elections were conducted “in a climate of fear, human rights violations, and international non-recognition.” In Tegucigalpa, the Washington-based human rights organization Centre for Justice and International Law (CEJIL) noted: “On election day, November 29, there were a number of incidents that confirmed the climate of repression in which the electoral process took place, which represented the consolidation of the coup d’etat of June 28th.”
Amnesty International issued a press release noting that authorities detained various individuals under a decree prohibiting gatherings of more than four people, some of whom have been charged with terrorism, and called for the identities and whereabouts of those detained to be revealed.
Weisbrot concluded bluntly, “First, you need to restore democracy, human rights, and civil liberties, which were violated throughout the campaign period. Then there can be a legitimate election with official international observer delegations. You can’t have free elections under a dictatorship.” Brazil had announced even before the elections that it would not recognise the elections and the results were quickly denounced by the other South American powerhouses, Venezuela and Argentina.
The US State Department, however, announced that they recognized Porfirio Lobo’s “ample victory”. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs Arturo Valenzuela however perplexingly said, “While the election is a significant step in Honduras’ return to the democratic and constitutional order … it’s only a step and it’s not the last step.”
He claimed that the Honduran Congress still needed to vote on the restoration of deposed President Manuel Zelaya and form a government of national unity. The US was backed by its close allies Colombia and Panama.
The Honduran elections precipitated a sharp rift within the Ibero-American Summit, consisting of twenty-two Latin countries, that began in Portugal on the same day as the elections. “What is at stake is whether we validate or not a new methodology of coups d’etat,” said Argentine Foreign Minister Jorge Taiana, whose country was seeking a rejection of the elections along with Bolivia, Cuba, Brazil, Spain, Venezuela, Ecuador, Paraguay, Guatemala and Chile.
Guyana, along with other members of CariCom, had taken a firm stand in denouncing the initial army coup in Honduras when it occurred. Accepting the elections as a way station to the “restoration” sends the wrong signal in a region that had suffered so much from the iron-fisted interventions of their armies for centuries.
The two decades of respite from army coups must not be allowed to be nipped in the bud but rather be encouraged to blossom into a permanent state of affairs. Guyana and CariCom must firmly reject the elections in Honduras.

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Honduran Smoke-screen

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