Honduras Coup: The Dumbest Regime on Earth
By Al Giordano
All governments have a tendency to become dimwitted and encrusted bureaucracies. But one month into the Honduras coup d’etat the illegitimate regime of “president” Roberto Micheletti wins the prize.
Its obsession with the possibility that the elected president Manuel Zelaya might return to Honduran soil has offered 32 days of clown show, one that has only served to increase the Honduran people’s opposition to the coup.
The regime says it has an arrest warrant for Zelaya but twice it has had the opportunity to enforce it and twice it did not.
The worry that the third time might be the charm has caused the illegitimate president to order a 24-hour martial curfew in the border states of El Paraíso and Choluteca. You can see in the video, above, the blockades set up by military forces with specific orders to stop three kinds of shipments from reaching those states: food, medicine and potable water. The drivers demonstrate for the camera that all they are carrying is food.
And you can see the trucks and cars that had been transporting that newly defined contraband lined up and unable to cross the checkpoints.
Zelaya is camped out across the border in Nicaragua. How starving or suffocating the border state Hondurans somehow prevents him from reentering is not explained by the coup mongers.
A military official explains on camera that he and his troops are only following orders from “the president” (meaning, the joke of a leader that is Micheletti). He also claims that ten Red Cross vehicles carrying food and medicine were allowed through the checkpoints.
Yet in the video one can see a Red Cross vehicle detained at the checkpoint, unable to pass.
El Paraíso counts with 380,000 residents. Choluteca has 420,000. Together they are home to more than ten percent of the Honduras' 7.5 million population. Even if the military official was telling the truth, how ten vehicles would somehow feed and heal 800,000 people – short of a Biblical miracle complete with a Sermon on the Mount – was also not explained.
In sum, the coup regime has converted two of the most important states into giant penitentiaries, with 800,000 inmates who have been cut off from the rest of their country and from food and medicine.
Neither El Paraíso nor Choluteca have historically been hotbeds of unrest, especially compared to the politically active capital of Tegucigalpa and the northern coastal regions and their social, farmer and labor movements.
But in less than a week, through martial law, the coup regime has ratcheted up the resentment against it, now, from these regions, too. Honduras’ legitimate First Lady, Xiomara Castro, now being pushed from some corners to enter the November presidential election as a candidate, perhaps with a newly formed independent party, has drawn large crowds in the region during her attempts to reunite with her exiled husband.
A blogger named Boz lists some lessons learned from the month of imposed dictatorship in Honduras, and the first is this:
The Micheletti government is dumb. If we didn't know it on day one, we knew it within the first week. The Micheletti government couldn't get its story straight about what occurred the day of the coup. They clearly botched the congressional vote, used a forged resignation letter, shut down media, imposed curfews and failed to get a single other government to recognize them. Violations of the constitution in the name of protecting the constitution and violations of civil liberties in the name of protecting democracy. Now it appears cracks are forming within the coup coalition. They've managed to stay in power for a month, but that's about all they've accomplished.
Meanwhile, yesterday, across the country, six hours away in Honduras’ second biggest city of San Pedro Sula, Micheletti reacted to news that Washington had begun to cancel the visas of coup leaders babbled this inanity:
“No gringo, Venezuelan, Bolivian or Ecuadoran is going to give orders to us.”
This, after his short-term Secretary of State had called US President Obama a “little nigger.”
To give you an idea of how deranged this coup “president” is while drunk with this particularly false brand of power, he offered his opinion of what would have happened if on June 28 the Honduran people had been allowed to vote on a non-binding referendum on whether they wanted to vote in November on whether to convene a Constitutional Convention:
“If we had permitted the Fourth Ballot Box, we would already, at this moment, be Chavistas, slaves to twenty-first century socialism, we would already be out of balance. Here, the only interference comes from the Supreme Creator!”
He forgot to mention that cats would already be sleeping with dogs, too.
Ahem, Señor Dictator: a binding vote couldn’t have taken place until November 29 and that would have only started the arduous process toward a democratically implemented change of the Honduran Constitution, a process that would take place under the next president elected on that same date. The suggestions that a previous non-binding vote could have “already” led to slavery and/or socialism are no more than the ravings of an unstable madman.
Meanwhile, the civil resistance to the coup continues to self-organize. In the coming hours, we’ll have important news to report about it…
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Piece by Mike Farrell at Huffington Post
Submitted July 29, 2009 - 7:13 am by Lucidamente (not verified)http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mike-farrell/where-the-hell-is-the-usa_b_2...
His big finish:
"Former Ambassador Robert White, now President of the Center for International Policy and an expert on the region, says the solution is simple: all Secretary Clinton need do is have U.S. Ambassador Hugo Llorens call a press conference in Tegucigalpa and, with the OAS representative at his side, read the OAS resolution and state that the return of President Zelaya is firm U.S. policy. Then he can stand back and 'watch the coup regime unravel.'
Instead, Honduran citizens are dying in pro-democracy demonstrations and others are murdered or disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Failing to restore a stolen presidency makes a mockery of Obama's words at the Summit of the Americas. So what keeps Secretary Clinton from denouncing this theft of government and demanding the return of the elected president? Certainly her relationship with Lanny Davis, the well-connected DC lawyer who has been hired by the financiers of the coup to be their U.S. mouthpiece can't supersede support for democratic rule... Can it?"
No Place Else...
Submitted July 29, 2009 - 7:27 am by Lorie Cavincan you get this authentic reporting on the Citizen Power of the Honduran people. When I hear anything on the news about the coup, I already know the nuances and bullshit as they hit the radiowaves. Why? Because I read this site.
That's why I support this site with a tiny monthly $$. Even in the throes of job loss, COBRA, pre-existing conditions, raising kids, I look to this site to give me hope. The Honduran People give me hope. Authenticity in life, whether up or down, keeps me going.
Mel could retrun Friday
Submitted July 29, 2009 - 9:39 am by PATUCAWARRIOR (not verified)Thank you Al for this latest post... Right on... Seems Honduran Congressmen who supported the Coup... Do not want to lose their Miami shopping privileges as well... After Arita and Saavedra lost their South Beach passports... Our sources say Mel should return as President Friday... Michelletti will join Bush as another wannabe revolutionary... Who added their circus act to world history... Our hearts will always be with those who have died as a result of unstable madmen... At several Michelletti blogs I have seen a pic of a Michelletti fan... Holding up a sign saying something like this... "Honduras does not have money" We are poor... But what we do have are balls"... Amazing how a man will sell his soul for an U.S. visa... What happended to their revolutionary "balls"...
Considering the fairly obvious point..
Submitted July 29, 2009 - 11:28 am by Scott Knoxthat the original referendum was scheduled for the same vote that would elect Zelaya's successor, I wonder if this chain of events only played into the hands of Honduras' legitimate President?
Not to compare Zelaya with Wallace, but from a political strategy view, it figures that he had a placeholder in mind to run in the fall, while waiting for the Constitutional amendment that would allow the people to vote him back into office.
I'm not sure being allowed to sit in the President's chair with a hostile legislature and judiciary is better for Zelaya right now - continuing as the insurgent against the moneyed interests (and making their gorillista puppets look like monkeys) should only make it easier to elect a sympathetic successor and generate popular support to overturn the term limit.
(I still wonder why the government didn't just impeach the President before trying to exile him? As long as they were trying for the appearence of legitimacy...)
November elections: do they need further upheaval?
Submitted July 29, 2009 - 12:33 pm by Nell (not verified)The candidates for the November elections have been announced. The ballot order was just published. (Thanks again to the commenter in a previous thread for providing a link in response to my question). There are at least two candidates attractive to voters who support broader public participation and constitutional reform: Cesar Ham of UD and Carlos Reyes, a popular movement leader who is running as an independent.
Xiomara Castro de Zelaya clearly has a bright political future, but I doubt very much she'll be running in the November presidential elections, and have little enthusiasm for the prospect. Even if Ham and Reyes stepped aside and threw their support to her in an ad-hoc 'unity ticket', wouldn't that just confirm the coup supporters' lie that this has all been about extending Zelaya's term in office, rather than about constitutional reform more broadly? Wouldn't the effort to replace candidates after the deadline reinforce the worst insinuations about Zelaya's extralegal and destabilizing methods?
But that's for the Honduran parties and popular organizations to decide among themselves.
The important thing now is for U.S. citizens is to support the popular movement (one way to do so is to publicize and attend their current speaking tour in the U.S.) and increase the pressure on our own government to live up to the early fine words about restoring democracy and constitutional order -- and that means pushing for the complete restoration of the Zelaya government.
That means the return to office of all the cabinet ministers who've been forced out, as well as the restoration of the legitimate mayor of San Pedro Sula. No "unity government" b.s., which would only reward coup participants.
O/T question
Submitted July 29, 2009 - 1:44 pm by Sadie (not verified)Al,
I commend the great reporting you're doing from Honduras; most news outlets have dropped it with a resounding thud.
I must confess, however, to missing your read on the U.S. Is anyone at Narco News currently working that angle?
Best,
Sadie
@ Sadie
Submitted July 29, 2009 - 2:19 pm by Scott KnoxIn response to:
Al wrote:
Personally, I think the Honduras story has more to do with American politics than Al is overtly pointing out.. the stalemate over healthcare reform at the bidding of the insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies appears to be beyond the ability of a Democratic President, a +80 Democratic majority in the House, and a "filibuster-proof" 60 vote Democratic majority in the Senate. But hey, the party has only been trying to do this since 1948, right?
That said, I imagine Al doesn't want this thread to turn into a discussion of US politics right now - but I couldn't resist the foreshadowing ; )
thanks, Scott
Submitted July 30, 2009 - 10:54 am by Sadie (not verified)Again, not bashing the Honduras coverage(agree that it is v. important in immediate and larger contexts, and latin America gets shoved under the rug outrageously often), just wishing we could clone Al a few times over. :)
@ Nell
Submitted July 30, 2009 - 11:09 am by Héctor (not verified)Nell, you were writting about november elections and First Lady options in Al´s previous post.
Analizing the events prior to the coup, Zelayas opposition had founded their arguments against the non-bindding referendum around several ideas; one of them was that the only way to reach a constituent assembly is thru a coup d'état. So, the signing of Arias' Plan with the complete acceptance of Zelaya´s return would indeed imply that a coup d'état took place.
Carlos H. Reyes has been saying lately that the first act he´ll make in the event he is elected President is invoking a constituent assembly.
Zelaya's opposition knew that door was unlocked for constituent assembly before the coup, but after if they opened the door completely.
This is why I believe Honduras Right Wing is so against Zelaya´s return.
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