[News] Questions About Honduras

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Questions from a Reader About Honduras

Posted by 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/users/al-giordano>Al 
Giordano - November 10, 2009 at 11:19 am
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3588/questions-reader-about-honduras


A Narco News reader named Darrol sent us the 
following letter, which we’ll publish in its 
entirety and gives us the opportunity to answer 
some questions that are probably on many minds:

Dear Narco News,

In Honduras, are El Libertador, Radio Globo and 
Canal 36 still closed, or have the glopistas allowed them to reopen?

It is astonishing that this important news has 
not been covered **anywhere**!!!  Why is nobody 
covering this?  Re-opened or still closed, either 
way the state of the news media in Honduras is itself big news.

Even on the web site of El Libertador, which I 
read almost daily, this que stion has not been 
covered.  I would send an email to El Libertador, 
but my Spanish is not that good.  I read it fine, 
but I have never tried writing it.

If the opposition news media is still shut down, 
then Washington can't pretend that the conditions exist for free elections.

If I'm not mistaken, Narco News has a focus that 
includes the state of the news media in Honduras.

More details I - and many others - would like to know are:

* What is the status of the studio equipment and 
transmitters for Radio Globo & Canal 36?

* What is the status of the printing press for El Libertador?

* What assurances, if any, have been given by 
anyone that the death threats against people like 
Jhonny Lagos will not be carried out?  It seems 
to me that - at a minimum - the US government 
should have extracted extremely "hard and fast" 
personal guarantees from the coup leaders, that 
journalists will not be threatened, as part of 
the US government's need to put a fig leaf on its 
decision to recognize the elections.

* Apart from the question of whether the 
opposition media is back in operation or not, the 
world wants to know something about the 
day-to-day details that might make it almost impossible for them to work.

Thanks for all the good work that all of you do at Narco News.

Darrol

Dear Darrol,

Both Channel 36 and Radio Globo are back on the 
air, although the coup regime has not returned 
the equipment its troops removed from both their studios on September 28.

El Libertador has been reduced to publishing 
about one issue a month, and editor Jhonny Lagos 
and his staff are operating more or less in 
underground fashion due to the continued violent 
threats against them. I am not aware that the US 
government has extracted any pledges from the 
coup regime regarding press freedom or that it has addressed the matter at all.

As for the November 29 “elections,” Independent 
presidential candidate Carlos H. Reyes has 
officially withdrawn his name from the ballot, 
saying that he won’t participate in a fraudulent 
process. The National Front Against the Coup 
d’Etat (the coordinating body for much of the 
resistance) has called for a boycott of said “elections.”

The Organization of American States will likely 
meet in general assembly over the next week and 
the topic of recognizing or not recognizing the 
“elections” will likely be debated. A majority of 
OAS nations are not going to go along with any 
suggestion of recognizing them or sending 
electoral observers and that would leave the 
current position – non-recognition – in vigor. 
That will also put Washington in the position 
where it would harm its other interests in the 
hemisphere if it chose to unilaterally recognize 
the elections while the coup regime has not honored the Tegucigalpa accord.

The topic has come up repeatedly at US State 
Department press briefings over the past week and 
spokesmen evade any “yes” or “no” answer as to 
whether the US will recognize the November 29 
“elections” even if President Zelaya is not 
restored to power. However, Assistant Secretary 
of State Thomas Shannon’s comments last week to 
CNN Español suggesting that Washington would 
recognize the “elections” regardless continue to 
give the coup regime oxygen and undercut all other pressures upon it.

The Honduran Congress has set a deadline of next 
Tuesday, November 17, for the Supreme Court and 
other agencies to issue their non-binding 
advisory opinions as to Zelaya’s possible return 
to the presidency. The court may issue a 
statement today or tomorrow: if it does, expect 
it to come out against that solution with 
continued threats to have Zelaya arrested if he 
sets foot outside the Brazilian Embassy.

Yesterday, inside that Embassy, US Ambassador 
Hugo Llorens sustained a long meeting with 
President Zelaya and will be returning there 
today for more discussion. Zelaya says the deal 
struck by the Tegucigalpa Accord is already dead. 
At the same time, he has not ruled out returning 
to the presidency if Congress votes to reinstate 
him. The key bloc of votes in Congress – 55 
members of the National Party, led by its 
presidential candidate Pepe Lobo – have not 
publicly pronounced how they will vote if 
Congress does take up the measure. And other 
Congressional leaders keep crowing that they 
won’t convene such a vote until after November 29.

Meanwhile, coup dictator Roberto Micheletti has 
gone through this farce of declaring himself the 
head of a “national unity government” (one of the 
planks of the Tegucigalpa Accord).

In other words, the situation in Honduras is one big clusterfuck.

Is there still a chance that President Zelaya 
might return to office prior to November 29? It 
gets less likely through each day of stalling 
tactics by the regime, but there is still a 
needle that might be threaded and it would go 
like this: Congress would have to convene quickly 
after its November 17 deadline for advisory 
opinions, and the National Party bloc would have 
to vote in unison to authorize Zelaya's return 
together with a couple of dozen anti-coup Liberal 
Party legislators and some minor party members. 
What gets forgotten in a lot of the statements 
back and forth (including the mutually symbiotic 
gloating by international golpistas on the right 
and "Obama coup theorists" on the left for whom 
Honduras, its civil resistance, and its struggles 
are merely pawns on an imperialist chess board) 
that it is entirely in Pepe Lobo’s interest to 
make that happen, since it would be the only way 
to make the November 29 vote at all respected 
within and without Honduras, and he is almost 
certainly going to be the winner of that vote 
whether it is legitimized or continues to be 
illegitimate. What makes the most sense for Lobo 
is to do everything possible to try to salvage 
the perceived legitimacy, ahead of time, of that 
"election." Those are the hard political realities on the ground.

Many have accurately referred to this as the “fig 
leaf” solution, but it is one that, sources tell 
Narco News, Zelaya would still accept at this 
late date, despite his having called the Accord 
“dead.” (There is, of course, a lot of posturing coming from all sides.)

And although the Tegucigalpa Accord would have 
Zelaya himself refrain from pushing for a 
Constituent Assembly for a new Constitution, it 
is not binding on anyone in the national 
resistance, not even on Xiomara Castro de Zelaya 
or Pichu Zelaya. That’s the 800-pound gorilla 
that is not leaving the room no matter how the next weeks play out.

The fact remains that even back in June when 
Zelaya attempted a non-binding referendum in 
favor of voting November 29 for or against a new 
Constitution and Constituent Assembly, not even 
that timeline had it happening before this 
presidential term is done next January 27. Even 
had a November 29 referendum approved such a 
process, there would still have to be another 
election scheduled to select delegates to that 
Constitutional Assembly, the body that would write the new Constitution.

Once the November 29 vote passes – whether its 
results are recognized or not – the number one 
item on the national agenda will continue to be 
the popular demand for that Constituent Assembly 
and the rebirth of a nation that it could bring. 
A lot of the rest are just matters of the circus 
going on up above and the media's obsession with 
them. The resistance, after 136 days, is not 
going away. And we will continue – as we have all 
along - to do our job of looking below, rather 
than fixating above, and reporting to you the 
real story, which is what happens on the ground.




Freedom Archives
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415 863-9977

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