[News] Next: A Popular Referendum for a New Honduras Constitution?

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Next: A Popular Referendum for a New Honduras Constitution?

Posted by 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/users/al-giordano>Al 
Giordano - October 23, 2009 at 8:34 am
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3555/next-popular-referendum-new-honduras-constitution

By Al Giordano

Reporting throughout Honduras over the past 118 
days of resistance to the coup d’etat, we heard 
the same thing from the people on the ground 
wherever we went: That whether or not President 
Manuel Zelaya returns to the post he was elected 
to serve, that whether or not “elections” happen 
on November 29, that whether or not the world 
views them as legitimate, all of that is 
secondary to the people’s primary demand: for a 
new Constitution and a constituent assembly 
(“constituente”) of elected representatives from 
every sector of society to write it democratically.

A little bird flew by my window this morning - 
the date the "talks" for a negotiated solution to 
the Honduras coup definitively broke down and 
ended - and suggested the following strategy 
idea, one that has been under discussion in 
important corners of the Honduran civil 
resistance: Why wait for an illegitimate regime’s 
permission to hold the referendum that the coup was designed to stop?

The coup was held on June 28 precisely to stop a 
non-binding referendum – one that asked if 
Hondurans wanted the right to vote for or against 
a new Constitution – but the regime’s own 
insistence on holding faux “elections” on 
November 29 inadvertently provides the people 
with the opportunity to do the very thing the 
coup was intended to stop: To put up ballot boxes 
outside of every “official” polling place and 
survey the people on that original question.

Now that the Honduran civil resistance and its 
diverse social movements are so much better 
organized in every town and city than ever 
before, the little bird asked, why not utilize 
the November 29 date of the regime’s sham 
“elections” to hold a real referendum? The 
suggestion is to place a “First Ballot Box” 
(“primera urna”), outside of every official 
polling place, that asks the first question anew: 
“Do you favor convening a national Constituent 
Assembly to democratically write a new 
Constitution for the Republic of Honduras?” “Yes” or “No?”

That little bird must have likewise carefully 
listened to the voices from below.

We heard it - and reported it to you - from the 
northeastern cities of Trujillo, Tocoa, and Saba 
and the nearby farms of Guadalupe Tepayac. We 
heard it throughout our reporting from coastal La 
Ceiba and from the Afro-Honduran and Garifuna 
communities throughout that coast. From the 
popular barrios of San Pedro Sula and the highway 
blockades of Comayagua the same central demand 
was on everyone’s lips: ¡Constituente! From the 
colonias in resistance throughout greater 
Tegucigalpa, ¡Constituente! From the western 
mountains of Santa Rosa de Copán to the fields 
and jungle outposts of Olancho, the same demand: 
¡Constituente! That is what a majority of the 
Honduran people seek and that is precisely what 
the coup d’etat – supported by only 17 percent of 
the public, according to 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3511/poll-wide-majority-hondurans-oppose-coup-d%E2%80%99etat-want-zelaya-back>the 
COIMER & OP poll – was executed to try to stop.

It was this yearning for a new Constitution – and 
President Zelaya’s endorsement of the people’s 
desire to vote on it – that provoked the coup 
d’etat on June 28. That was the date that 
Hondurans were scheduled to vote on a non-binding 
referendum – a “consulta” – about whether they 
would like to cast ballots on November 29 into a 
“fourth ballot box” (“cuarta urna”) for or 
against such a constituent assembly to 
democratically remake the Constitution and the nation.

The coup on that date not only illegally removed 
the President from the country, it not only shut 
down the two most trusted TV and radio news 
networks in the land, but it also unleashed a 
wave of violent military and police attacks on 
the referendum ballots and boxes throughout every 
municipality in the country to prevent that 
non-binding consulta from happening. Why did they 
attack cardboard boxes? Because the oligarchs and 
the minority 17 percent of Hondurans that are 
with them knew full well that the results of that 
referendum would have demonstrated that an 
overwhelming of majority of Hondurans want to 
vote to construct a new Constitution. And that 
national expression of popular will would have 
created unstoppable momentum toward that goal.

And since the current Constitution – drafted in 
1982 by those in power, including current coup 
dictator Roberto Micheletti – allows for a fixed 
playing field in which the few control the 
resources and freedoms of the many, the one thing 
the coup regime can’t tolerate is that the 
Constitution be rewritten to become one that is 
of, by and for the people. That small group in 
power knows very well that the majority of the 
people no longer want the few to decide everything for them.

What the little bird proposes would be a textbook 
“dilemma action,” in which a civil resistance 
puts the regime on the horns of dilemma in which 
it has no good options to respond.

If the Honduran social movements were to schedule 
their own referendum on that same November 29 
date – a parallel vote, with a new ballot box 
outside of every polling place in the land for 
voters to deposit their decision on whether to 
convene a constituente for a new Constitution – 
the regime would be left with two very bad 
options. Sure, the regime could send its soldiers 
and cops to attack the peaceful process and the 
citizens that carry it out. But that would lead 
to startling news images of violent repression on 
Election Day itself, and a subsequent guarantee 
that no nation in the world – much less, the 
majority of the Honduran people - would be able 
to recognize the November 29 official election as legitimate.

Or, the regime could alternately let the peaceful 
action happen, in which case the resistance could 
then count the votes announce the results of its 
national survey on Election Night – which would 
likely be overwhelmingly in favor of a new 
Constitution and a constituente to get them there 
– and thus place the constituente back at the 
front of the national agenda at the very time 
when the regime’s sham “election” will have culminated and played itself out.

If the last 118 days of resistance and repression 
are prologue, it’s probably likely that the 
imbecile regime of Micheletti and his Simian 
Council will opt for Election Day images and 
videos of its police and soldiers attacking 
something as wholesome and non-threatening as 
ballot boxes from every corner of Honduras. That 
would certainly end its claims to be democratic 
or civil or legitimate, and make it impossible 
for the world or the Honduran population to 
accept the regime’s “election” results as legitimate.

The little bird added that it would not be 
recommended to call the authentic referendum the 
“cuarta urna” or “fourth ballot box,” as it was 
referred to last June. That title came from the 
way Honduran elections are structured. The first 
ballot box was to be that where people would have 
deposited their votes for President (and for the 
Central American Parliament). The second ballot 
box was for Congress. And the third ballot box 
was slated for municipal offices. The coup regime 
– especially since its September 29 “state of 
siege” decree suspending Constitutional freedoms 
of speech, press, assembly, transit and due 
process – has already made it too late for fair 
and free elections to culminate as soon as 
November 29. Therefore, its first, second and 
third ballot boxes are no longer legitimate.

A Civil Society-driven referendum or consulta 
would become, thus speaks the little bird, the de 
facto First Ballot Box, La Primera Urna.

The regime says it wants an election campaign 
between now and November 29. The little bird 
says, “why not give them one?” Why not give them 
posters that say “Vote Yes on the Primera Urna?” 
Why not go door-to-door and house-to-house 
campaigning for it? Why not hold “Vote Yes” 
Campaign rallies in every city and town? And why 
not organize it all at the local level in 
Honduras’ 394 municipalities, and even further 
down to the election district level?

Each such rally, every such poster or flyer, 
would serve up a challenge to the illegitimate 
regime: Let it happen, or plague its "elections" 
with the stain of its own violent and repressive tendencies.

The coup regime’s investment in its November 29 
“election” as its last gasp for national and 
international legitimacy unwittingly puts the 
national resistance in the driver’s seat on that 
date. A strategy of direct interference with the 
regime's phony “election” (say, one of attacking 
the regime's own ballot boxes) would be seen, the 
little bird says, as offering mixed signals and 
confusion over which side authentically supports 
democracy. But a strategy of putting up parallel 
ballot boxes, near each of the regime’s polling 
places, would either succeed in making the very 
referendum that the coup mongers feared on June 
28 happen for real, or it would cause that regime 
to ham-handedly make the photo and video images 
from its own election day that define it to the 
nation and the world those of its own troops 
attacking and destroying ballot boxes.

If the regime attacks ballot boxes, it loses. If 
it more wisely allows the very referendum the 
coup was designed to prevent happen, it also 
loses. That would make the previous six months of 
coup government irrelevant, and an abject 
failure. Because the very next day, on November 
30, the center of the national agenda will 
remain, and more strongly become, the public 
demand for a new constitution - and a constituent 
assembly to make it democratically so.

Thus spoke a little bird.





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