Could There Have Been a Different Outcome?

While the US may still have hopes of reviving the corpse, the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord seems to be quite dead. The Frente de Resistencia has declared a boycott of the national elections scheduled for November 29, even if somehow President Zelaya were restored in the next 18 days, and in truth, it is hard to see how anyone can claim elections under the current conditions will be free, fair, and transparent-- the conditions the US originally set for recognition, although with recent statements it is clear that the only US "condition" for recognition is that a semblance of elections be carried out.

So the question occurs to us: was this inevitable? leave aside the criticism of the waffling, muddied messages, and speaking silences of the US State Department that always came just when it seemed the de facto regime was getting clear on what was necessary for the international community to be satisfied. Was there ever any solution to this crisis, once the coup architects started on their Plan A without any Plan B?

In retrospect, we think that a key mistake was ever negotiating with Roberto Micheletti. Not that anyone could have quite realized at the time how intransigent he would be personally: that kind of unpredictable personality is a risk in any negotiation. But because doing so not only gave him and the regime that he consolidated undue legitimacy, elevating them to the equivalent of the constitutional President and his cabinet; it also allowed Micheletti to consolidate executive power within Honduras.

Am I suggesting the international community should simply have given Honduras an immediate cold shoulder? hardly. But if we ask ourselves, on June 29, who in the Honduran government still exercised power with a constitutional mandate, then we can identify the Congress and yes, even the corrupt and unjust Supreme Court as branches of the government with which the international community could have initiated more productive dialogue, as these bodies have something to lose, while Roberto Micheletti, once he cast his lot with the coup architects, could not reverse course.

At the time, of course, international representatives did refuse to talk to the de facto regime's new head. This was one of the things the Micheletti regime complained about. But instead of continuing to isolate the illegally installed executive officers; instead of opening and sustaining a dialogue with the Congress, which we now know includes a substantial group against the coup, and a majority we suspect wishes the coup never happened; the US pushed for a mediated dialogue directly between Micheletti and Zelaya.

Remember that the original San Jose dialogue forced the legally elected President to accept negotiating directly with an unconstitutional usurper? It was that moment that gave Micheletti authority. Not the military intervention on June 28, that was by all accounts initiated by a cabal of business interests spear-headed by political masters not currently holding elected office.

The ringleaders of the coup, people like Carlos Flores Facussé, former president and current business leader, are by definition pragmatists. If, at the beginning of the international intervention, Micheletti-- who we have seen reveal himself as an honest ideologue (however misguided we find his ideological positions to be)-- had been isolated, discussions had taken place with Congress, and back-channel communication with the pragmatists in the cabal was carried out, no legitimacy would have been conferred on the usurping executive officers, and a wider array of interests could have been encouraged to consider what they stood to lose.

Once Micheletti was treated as Zelaya's equal, the course of negotiations was almost certainly headed for deadlock. Worse: the first draft of the San Jose Accord gave the Micheletti executive branch too much credence. Inserted in that document, which emerged as the basis for the Tegucigalpa Accord, were items that presumed the guilt of President Zelaya in matters that were (still are in fact) live subjects of legal proceedings in Honduras. So the spin given the San Jose Accord, even in its unsigned state, in Honduras was that Oscar Arias recognized that Zelaya was trying to change the constitution to stay in power.

What if, instead, negotiations had taken place with the Honduran Congress? it was Congress, after all, that made Micheletti de facto executive; it was Congress that accepted a forged resignation letter; it was Congress that issued a Decree removing Zelaya from office without citing any constitutional basis for that action. Congress, as an institution, has lost more from the coup than the presidency, as an institution. And all of the members of Congress were duly elected by the Honduran people; they represent a significant variety of positions; and they have something lasting to lose if the elections of 2009 are not recognized.

Micheletti, having achieved his long-term goal of exercising executive authority (although he will never have the title "President" legally), cannot run for President in the future, under the Constitution he claims to be defending. He of course can return to Congress and run and, given the nature of Honduran politics, count on staying in Congress as long as he wants; but he probably won't find enthusiastic welcome from other politicians there who will not want to be tainted by association. (Think of the way Elvin Santos, the presidential candidate from Micheletti's own Liberal Party, has tried to distance himself; now multiply it by 64.)

So Micheletti literally has everything to lose in negotiating, and nothing to gain; and thus rhetorically has nothing to lose by, as he has, continually perverting, subverting, or simply rejecting any negotiated settlement.