[News] Questions About Honduras
Anti-Imperialist News
news at freedomarchives.org
Tue Nov 10 17:58:41 EST 2009
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 well 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 wont participate in a fraudulent
process. The National Front Against the Coup
dEtat (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 Shannons 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 Zelayas 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
wont 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 Lobos 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. Thats 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
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
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