More from Micheletti: Playing out the clock?

Spain's El Economista is out ahead of the Micheletti-Arias story, and their reporting suggests we should view this latest move as perhaps a new way to slow things down, remain in power, and appear to be addressing international concerns.

Their story says Micheletti asked Oscar Arias

to send a commission to undertake an internal dialogue of reconciliation.

The story cites a press release, unsigned but attributed to the Executive branch, as saying

This dialogue, this actual communication, should include all the parties of civil society: churches, trade societies, student groups, business associations, media, labor unions, universities.

While such broad participation would be nice-- and ironically, precisely this kind of participatory democracy is what the Zelaya government was doing that got people in Micheletti's cabal so worried-- it is also a daunting order to imagine such a dialogue being accomplished before Zelaya is restored.

Micheletti is quoted as "explaining" in the press release that

the results of the San Jose dialogue will be articulated and promulgated by all those elements of civil society, so that they should be encouraged and inspired to initiate this dialogue today, immediately.

Wonder why all these civil sectors now have to pick up after the de facto regime that was so anxious to keep their opinions about government from being recorded?

While saying that the San Jose framework is "the best route to achieve consensus in Honduras" Micheletti reportedly added

Our citizens need to endorse and widen the dialogue of San Jose with a dialogue in Honduras, that is to say, a dialogue among our own people.

This from the man who suspended rights of free speech and freedom of assembly.

Not to say that the Spanish newspaper accepted this press release without some degree of due skepticism. They note that Micheletti actually rejected the San Jose accord when he denied the central point calling for the restoral of President Zelaya. But, they continue, he agreed to "analyze" the rest of the aspects of the San Jose Accord. Which is how the Micheletti regime has been able to claim, on the one hand, that it is Zelaya's team that has broken off negotiations, while actually failing to consider the one, unalterable fact of any internationally-recognized solution: President Zelaya must be restored to his office.

Finally, as the article notes, having claimed he could not speak for the other branches of government, Micheletti is now stuck with the outcomes of deliberations by those other bodies. The Supreme Electoral Tribunal has rejected the call to move the November elections forward to October, because-- as I long have noted-- this is unconstitutional.

And the Congress has apparently limited its discussion to the question of amnesty for political crimes, forming a commission that reportedly has written a report, which has yet to be shared openly, but that all news coverage suggests will reject this as well, congress members having been encouraged to believe that political payback against the Zelaya government was now completely assured.

So, maybe Micheletti has actually accepted the San Jose Accords, including restoral of Zelaya as President. But it looks like it doesn't matter one bit if he does-- and cynically, one could argue that all he is doing is playing out the clock in a different way.