[News] Reports of a Deal in Honduras Are Premature

[Anti-Imperialist News]

Reports of a Deal in Honduras Are Premature

Posted by 
<http://narcosphere.narconews.com/users/al-giordano>Al 
Giordano - October 30, 2009 at 9:58 am
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3567/reports-deal-honduras-are-premature

US officials and commercial media organizations 
are popping champagne corks prematurely over a 
reported US-brokered “deal” to return Honduran 
President Manuel Zelaya to (limited) power, but 
the two sides that reportedly signed the 
agreement already disagree over what exactly it says.

Reuters 
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2a08190-c564-11de-8193-00144feab49a.html>reports 
that coup “president” Micheletti has agreed to step down:

”I have authorized my negotiating team to sign a 
deal that marks the beginning of the end of the 
country’s political situation,” Micheletti told reporters on Thursday night.

He said Zelaya could return to office after a 
vote in Congress that would be authorized by the 
country’s Supreme Court. The deal would also 
require both sides to recognize the result of a 
Nov. 29 presidential election and would transfer 
control of the army to the top electoral court.

If approved by Congress, Zelaya would be able to 
finish out his presidential term, which ends in 
January. It was not clear what would happen to 
other elements of the agreement if Congress votes against Zelaya’s restoration.

(Bold type mine, for emphasis.)

But Micheletti’s claim that a Congressional vote 
to restore Zelaya would require Supreme Court 
authorization is a flat out lie, according to a 
source with Zelaya inside his Brazilian Embassy 
refuge in Tegucigalpa: “That is what the 
golpistas have put out, but that is NOT the 
accord
 The Supreme Court gives its non-binding 
opinion to the Congress, but the key is that all 
of this takes time, time that the golpistas want to keep taking.”

While there is some healthy distrust already over 
whether Congress will gin up on its end and 
really vote to restore Zelaya, that probably will 
be easier to accomplish than many believe. Two 
words: Pepe Lobo. The National Party candidate 
for President, Lobo is leading in the polls. He 
obviously wants very much for the November 29 
“elections” to become internationally recognized 
elections. His party holds 55 of 128 seats in 
Honduras’ unicameral legislature, just ten short 
of a majority. There are at least 22 Liberal 
Party members that have publicly indicated they 
want Zelaya back as president, plus 11 minor 
party legislators most of whom are likely to go 
along with such a deal. Faced with such a 
patchwork majority, look for most of the 62 
Liberal Party members in Congress to fold and go 
with the flow. The Congressional vote is not 
likely to prove a stumbling block to implementing this agreement.

The real problem could be the authoritarian 
Supreme Court. Micheletti’s invention of a 
non-existent clause in the agreement, one that 
requires the court’s approval of it, points to 
where the stalling tactic will come from. This is 
the same Supreme Court that carried out the coup 
d’etat on June 28 and has micro-managed the 
regime’s affairs all summer and fall on a level 
that would not be appropriate or legal in most 
countries. Because Honduras’ 1982 Constitution is 
such a self-conflicted document with many 
articles that contradict each other, the court 
has been cherry-picking which laws to discard and 
which to interpret, often badly.

What the summer of 2009 in Honduras has 
demonstrated is that democracies need not only 
worry about excesses of executive branch power. 
In this case, it is the judicial branch that 
proved the primary and most dangerous usurper of democracy.

If Micheletti keeps insisting that this so-called 
“agreement” requires Supreme Court ratification, 
look for this game to go into extra innings before any resolution can happen.

On the other hand, if Secretary Clinton and her 
team of negotiation babysitters got their ducks 
and supreme court members in line ahead of time – 
reflecting a level of attention to detail that 
they haven’t displayed all summer long – then, 
yes, this deal would be likely to succeed.

The devil will be in the details, and their 
implementation. Until it’s clear that the Supreme 
Court or Congress won’t stand in the way, there is no deal.

And I’ll repeat: The problem won’t likely come 
from Congress, but, rather, a continuance of the 
real problem all along: the despotic, arbitrary 
and anti-democracy tendencies of the Honduras Supreme Court.

Update: Pepe Lobo 
<http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAkMGKIUDg_ngUiZboxQbYj5_DPwD9BLGVKO1>weighs 
in, exactly as we predicted he would:

"We are willing to be cooperative in Congress 
with the agreement of the negotiators," Porfirio 
Lobo, a National Party lawmaker who is favored to 
win the Nov. 29 presidential elections, said 
Friday. "The best decision for Honduras will be taken."

(And it's worth noting, once again, how 
embarrassingly clumsy and wrongheaded the La La 
Land prognostications are from a certain golpista 
corner of the Ugly American diaspora of the expat 
community in Honduras. 
<http://lagringasblogicito.blogspot.com/2009/10/guaymuras-accord-tonight.html>Last 
night, the anonymous blogger who calls herself La 
Gringa told her gullible readers: "presidential 
candidate Pepe Lobo is asking the Nacionalistas 
to abstain." The sheer stupidity and inability to 
deduce what is in Lobo's best interests is staggering, but also typical.)




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