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<h1><font size=4><b>Reports of a Deal in Honduras Are
Premature</b></font></h1><font size=3>Posted by
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/users/al-giordano">Al
Giordano</a> - October 30, 2009 at 9:58 am<br>
<a href="http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3567/reports-deal-honduras-are-premature" eudora="autourl">
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/thefield/3567/reports-deal-honduras-are-premature<br>
<br>
</a>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.<br><br>
Reuters
<a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2a08190-c564-11de-8193-00144feab49a.html">
reports</a> that coup “president” Micheletti has agreed to step
down:<br><br>
</font>
<dl>
<dd>”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.<br><br>
<dd>He said Zelaya could return to office after a vote in Congress that
would be authorized by the country’s Supreme Court.</b> 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.<br><br>
<dd>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.<br><br>
</dl>(Bold type mine, for emphasis.)<br><br>
</i>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.”<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
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.<br><br>
Update:</b> Pepe Lobo
<a href="http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jAkMGKIUDg_ngUiZboxQbYj5_DPwD9BLGVKO1">
weighs in</a>, exactly as we predicted he would:<br><br>
<dl>
<dd>"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."<br><br>
</dl>(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.
<a href="http://lagringasblogicito.blogspot.com/2009/10/guaymuras-accord-tonight.html">
Last night</a>, 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.)<br><br>
<br><br>
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