POU JOEL(GONBO A CHO POU POUCHIS YO NAN HONDURAS)

Cracks in the Honduran Coup Regime Grow Wider




Posted by Al Giordano - August 18, 2009 at 10:49 am

By Al Giordano

We've previously noted that some key members of the coup regime
power structure – notably business magnate Adolfo Facusse and Liberal
Party presidential nominee Elvin Santos – had begun waxing aloud to
find a scapegoat for the illegality of the June 28 coup d’etat. They
had both settled on the Armed Forces, and the “original sin” of all
that has gone awry since, according to them, was that the military
shipped elected President Manuel Zelaya out of the country instead of
arraigning him to face prosecution.

Coup regime “president” Roberto Micheletti has just added his voice to the cacophony, Bloomberg reports:
<blockquote>

“There was an error by a certain sector,”
Micheletti said today in an interview in Tegucigalpa. “It wasn’t
correct. We have to punish whoever allowed that to happen. The rest was
framed within what the constitution requires.”

…A mistake was made when Zelaya, still
wearing pajamas, was put on a plane to Costa Rica instead of being held
for trial, Micheletti said.
</blockquote>

That is indeed rich coming from Micheletti who has
fumbled two opportunities since the coup to walk his talk and arrest
Zelaya as he keeps claiming he wants to do. The first came on July 5
when Zelaya attempted to fly into the Toncontin International Airport
in Tegucigalpa but Micheletti ordered the same Armed Forces to litter
the runway with trucks and soldiers to prevent the plane from landing.
The second came on July 19 when Zelaya briefly stepped into Honduran
territory from the Nicaraguan side of the border and again the military
and police had orders not to arrest him.

Micheletti is in fact declaring the military a
scapegoat for doing just once what Micheletti himself has ordered them
to do a second and third time. He doesn’t really want Zelaya to stand
trial because, first, the so-called evidence against the President is
flimsy and falsified, and, second, because the regime fears that the
very people of Honduras might assemble to break down any wall that
might hold their elected president.

In that context, Micheletti’s words constitute an admission that the coup has been legally flawed from the start.

Meanwhile, Liberal Party candidate Santos – under criticism for the multi-million dollar highway construction contracts his company has from US taxpayers,
thanks to the Millennium Challenge Corporation chaired by Secretary of
State Hillary Clinton – has determined that the best defense is to go
on offense. Yesterday, he accused
exiled Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, elected in 2005 on the Liberal
Party line, of a “political alliance” with National Party presidential
candidate Pepe Lobo to sabotage his chances in the planned November
“election.”

And adding to the clown show was the coup regime’s make believe “foreign minister,” Simian Council member Martha Lorena Alvarado,
who yesterday charged that the delegation currently in Honduras from
the Inter American Human Rights Council, affiliated with the
Organization of American States (OAS), is “infiltrated by Latin
American leftist movements.” (The delegation is made up of human rights
officials from elected governments throughout the hemisphere.) She
insisted that “the first violation of human rights” in Honduras is that
caused by striking schoolteachers whom, she accused, are violating the
rights of the children to go to school in the summer months. As she
spoke those words, out in the streets of the capital National Police
were busy beating up a reporter for Channel 36 television who had the
temerity to try and film what are now daily violent attacks against
peaceful demonstrators.

This business of “working the refs” – the regime
daily makes statements aimed at discrediting an OAS delegation of
foreign ministers that will arrive next in Honduras to try and broker
the return of the elected president - is clearly intended to deflect
from the continued heavy-handed violation of the most basic democratic
rights by an unelected regime.

And in Washington DC yesterday, a member of the coup regime’s own delegation to the US admitted to the Argentina news agency TELAM
that the coup was illegal. Delegation member Arturo Corrales (speaking,
in the photo above) of the Christian Democratic Party, is contradicting
not just the Armed Forces but also the man who sent him to Washington:
Micheletti himself:
<blockquote>

“In Honduras, we are clearly convinced that the
military participation in this process is zero. Its participation is
limited to guard the electoral process,” said Corrales who added that
President Zelaya’s rights “were violated… Every Honduran citizen has
the right to live in Honduras and the State is obligated to do
everything it can to guarantee that.”

“It’s true that Mr. Roberto Micheletti nominated
us to represent the executive branch (in Washington) but we all
represent a longing for a resolution in Honduras.”
</blockquote>

The layers of the onion around the Honduran coup
regime continue to peel and flake away from its core. The statements
and actions of its own key players contradict the regime’s daily
insistence that there is normality in the country.

“We (the members of the Micheletti appointed
delegation) are convinced that the San José accord (to reinstate Zelaya
to the presidency) is worthwhile and continues being the focus of an
agreement to come before the (November 29) elections, “said Corrales.
“This has come to the point of maturity. I believe that the visit by
the (OAS) foreign ministers (to Honduras) is going to provoke the final
stage of this dialogue and the implementation stage will begin.”

It remains to be seen whether the coup that can’t
shoot straight will be able to come to agreement among its own
conspirators, much less with the rest of Honduras and the hemisphere
named América. But there is a sense that in this game of musical chairs
the tune is drawing to a close and the coup plotters are nervously
eyeing the seats in the hopes on not being left the last ones standing
alone and abandoned.

Comments



god dammit al


Submitted August 18, 2009 - 11:23 am by please (not verified)

we need you back here.

• reply
  

Micheletti's admission of guilt


Submitted August 18, 2009 - 12:01 pm by Ryan Vaquero (not verified)

I was hoping that yesterday's article in Bloomberg would show up
here! This is the best news I've heard in a while, actually. The
reasons I think this is important:
1) Micheletti wouldn't have come out and said this unless he had to ... it publicly demonstrates that he's feeling pressure.
2) This demonstrates the lack of cohesion and truthfulness coming
from the coup regime. It was waaay back on July 3 when the Miami Herald
ran the interview with Honduran Army attorney Col. Herberth Bayardo
Inestroza, who made some amazing assertions. The statement he made
which is relevant to this comment was: ''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."
Although not exactly relevant to this comment, he also made the
unbelievable statement that because the Honduran Army has historically
been involved in suppressing leftist political tendencies, the military
would never accept a leftist government, democratically-elected or not:
''We
fought the subversive movements here and we were the only country that
did not have a fratricidal war like the others. It would
be difficult for us, with our training, to have a relationship with a
leftist government. That's impossible."
Apparently, the concept that the Armed Forces serve whatever
democratic government is elected by the people doesn't fly with Col.
Inestroza and he's brazen enough to rant this to the Miami Herald.
3) Two weeks later, the president of the Honduran Supreme Court also
made it clear that the removal of President Zelaya was illegal in an
interview with La Tribuna: "The Supreme Court ordered Zelaya's capture
and authorized the raid on his house so he could be captured," Rivera
said. "The expulsion was not in the capture order, and in that sense,
we have to analyze if (his expulsion) was the best thing given the
necessities of the moment."
4) Unfortunately for Roberto Micheletti, it was almost 2 weeks after
both the military -and- the Supreme Court admitted that Zelaya's
removal from the country was illegal when Micheletti argued otherwise
in his op-ed piece for the Wall Street Journal:
"The military was ordered by an entirely civilian Supreme Court to
arrest Mr. Zelaya. His removal was ordered by an entirely civilian and
elected Congress. To suggest that Mr. Zelaya was ousted by means of a
military coup is demonstrably false.

Regarding the decision to expel Mr. Zelaya from the country the
evening of June 28 without a trial, reasonable people can believe the
situation could have been handled differently. But it is also necessary
to understand the decision in the context of genuine fear of Mr.
Zelaya’s proven willingness to violate the law and to engage in mob-led
violence."
So, who exactly is going to be "punished" for the "entirely
civilian" removal, Micheletti? Maybe the person who was still defending
it, long after the entire world and even members of the coup conspiracy
itself were admitting that it was illegal?
5) Not really being a scholar on Honduran constitutional law, I have
to believe that these admissions are significant. If Zelaya should have
been arrested and gone on trial, then a whole bunch of people have been
wrong about the "constitutionality" and pristine "law & order" of
the coup. Now that the Army, the Supreme Court and the Executive of
Honduras has publicly admitted that a crime (perhaps treason?) was
committed during the kidnapping of democratically-elected President
Zelaya, perhaps the only people in the entire world still defending the
coup as perfectly legal is Connie Mack and Mary O'Grady.
6) Finally, Micheletti's threat that SOMEONE is going to be
"punished" for committing this crime means that the coup regime gets to
fight it out amongst themselves who exactly will be "punished". And,
this should only be the beginning of who gets "punished" ... hopefully,
other "crimes" that occurred during this coup period will be admitted
to, and who will be punished for the order to fire live rounds into the
peaceful crowd at the airport? Who will be punished for torturing and
dumping the body of a young man at the Honduras-Nicaragua border? Who
will be punished for the drive-by shooting at Via Campesina? And so on.
The coup plotters, who are supposed to be convincing the world that
constitutional order is firmly in place in Honduras, will instead be
engaged in a paranoia-driven blame game. Who wants to be the one to
take the fall for this?

• reply
  

Mapping the fall of the coup


Submitted August 18, 2009 - 3:51 pm by Roy Martin

Al,
You've done a great job explaining (and predicting) how all this
would play out, though you were wrong about Obama's handling of the
situation early on. Alternatively, you may have hit the nail on the
head way back when you suggested it would be a mistake for Barack to
appoint Hillary as SoS. It may be that she essentially tied his hands,
though I must say I expected him to be able to pressure her to stay in
line.
I really miss your political analysis on issues other than Honduras
as the health care debate plays out. I'd love your take on whether
Obama was floating a trial baloon on dropping the public option for
fear he can't get it through the Senate. I'd also like to know your
opinion as to whether we're best off getting whatever reform we can get
and trying to improve it incrementally over time or simply saying no to
change that doesn't include a real public option and letting the system
continue to implode.
I'd sure like to see Obama do a much better job of selling health
care reform, and would love your take on that too. I recall the way
Reagan would go on the air and change the dynamic around political
issues. Health care reform would seem ripe for that, with the insurance
and pharmaceutical companies making great targets for popular outrage
(rather than the Administration itself) if only the President could
bring himself to move away from his instinct for moderation.
Would also like your take on the current climate, in which
protestors are bringing guns to political events. Hard to imagine the
Bush Administration permitting such things. I seem to recall protestors
having been carted off to jail for far less than that. Tolerating such
behavior would seem to welcome more of it and that's scary in a nation
with a long history of political violence from the extreme right.
Wouldn't mind being called out for chicken littling if I'm off base.
Would be well worth it to receive the education and understanding that
was so helpful to all of us during the primaries and the election.

Pipo,

E pa anyen non ,mesye Ondiras yo te wè koudeta ann Ayiti an te pase tankou yon lè alapòs yo konprann ke yo ka repete menm bagay lan.

Si Mc Cain te genyen eleksyon an ,tout bagay t ap gen tan regle deja wi;ou t ap deja tande ke ZELAYA te lan trafik dwòg ak lòt bagay konsa .
Pouchis yo deja akize ZELAYA ke l lan dwòg ,ke l lan koripsyon men sa pa manche.
Gwo peyi lan Amerik di Sid tankou Lajantin ak Brezil deja deklare ke yo pa p rekonèt prezidan ki ap sòti lan eleksyon Novanm yo,si yo pa kite ZELAYA tounen anvan sa.Se pa etonan non pou w wè OBAMA lave men l e kite gwo peyi lan Amerik di Sid yo monte yon operasyon militèkont pouchis yo.
Mesye yo pa vle koudeta a ,paske si l reyisi ,yo menm tou yo an danje!