Homework for Lobo Sosa

Porifirio Lobo Sosa returned from San Jose, Costa Rica, yesterday after meeting with Presidents Oscar Arias of Costa Rica, and Ricardo Martinelli of Panama, and immediately cancelled his planned trip to the Dominican Republic to lobby its president, Leonel Fernandez, for support.

He came back with homework, assigned by Arias, Martinelli, and Clinton, homework which will help make it more palatable for these three politicians to recognize him as president of Honduras in January, though they claim to speak for all international governments. The three of them made it clear to Lobo Sosa that he needed to accomplish all his homework for the international community to recognize him, but in return, they agreed to lobby for him.

First, he must see to the compliance with all of the steps of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord. This includes the establishment of a government of national unity and reconciliation and the establishment of a truth commission.

Second, there needs to be a general amnesty for events of June 28 and later, an amnesty for political offenses, not criminal ones. This is something that was part of the original San Jose Accord, but both Zelaya and Micheletti felt was unnecessary and thus left out of the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord.

Third, that Roberto Micheletti needs to step down now; that it will be hard to get international governments to recognize Lobo Sosa if he takes office from Micheletti.

Arias and Martinelli told him that the government of national unity and reconciliation needs to be formed now, and that the truth commission needs to be formed in the first quarter of 2010. They made it clear that international aid will be conditioned on compliance. Lobo Sosa said on his return:

"We need to resolve this situation because, if not, what will happen is that there is approximately $2,000 million dollars which we won't have acess to, at least not in the first months of next year."

Arias, Clinton, Martinelli lobbying for Lobo Sosa

Oscar Arias confirmed yesterday that he got a phone call from Hillary Clinton concerning the need to get Porfirio Lobo Sosa recognized, and that he, in collaboration with Ricardo Martinelli, would be using technology to gather support for Lobo Sosa.

After a two hour meeting yesterday, Arias and Martinelli told Lobo Sosa they would do whatever is necessary to get the international community to recognize Lobo Sosa as president on January 27, 2010.

President Zelaya to President Obama: Walk the Talk

Office of the President of the Republic

From the Desk of the President

Tegucigalpa, 14 November, 2009

His Excellency

Barack Obama

President of the United States

Washington D.C.

Dear President Obama:

When we met for the first time the 8th of July with the Secretary of State Cinton after the Coup d'Etat there was made clear to me and to the world the position of the Obama administration of condemning the Coup d'Etat, not recognizing its authorities and demanding the return to the state of law with the restitution to the office of President elected by the people. The official position of your government and its representatives that sponsored and signed the resolutions of the UN, OAS. In which the third point demanded my immediate and secure restitution.

Beginning the 28th of June of 2009 my kidnapping by the military and expatriation to Costa Rica. The Congress of the Republic issued an illegal decree where it ordered "To separate the citizen José Manuel Zelaya Rosales from the office of Constitutional President of the Republic" without constitutional abilities to do so, and without due process without any legal ruling being cited.

From the first meeting with Secretary Hillary Clinton mediation by the president of Costa Rica Oscar Arias was proposed to me, despite the fact that I consider that it is counterproductive to engage in dialogue with persons that have a gun in their hands, I accepted considering the auspices of the US and the international community.

In a communiqué dated the 4th of September of the present year, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed the following: "The positive conclusion of the process initiated by Arias will be the suitable basis to proceed with a legitimate election".

It is known by everyone that the de facto regime, without the visit to Honduras of the Subsecretary of State for the Western Hemisphere, Thomas Shannon, Daniel Restrepo and Craig Kelly, would not have signed the Accord. Everyone knows why they broke the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord. The same president Oscar Arias for the sake of the truth declared that "Micheletti never had the will to collaborate and that on the contrary he was mocking the international community and only sought to extend the time to never turn over the power that he has".

Ex-president Ricardo Lagos, prominent member of the international Verification Commission in his declarations confirms this, by stating "Sr. Micheletti broke it", "Micheletti did things that he should not have done such as to say I will form a government of unity without Zelaya" which made this negotiated accord fail.

The same day that the Verification Commission of the accord was installed in Tegucigalpa, they were caught unaware by declarations of functionaries of the State Department where they modified their position and interpreted the accord unilaterally with the following declarations: "the elections will be recognized by the US with or without restitution"; the de facto regime celebrated this change and used these declarations for their objectives, and immediately ended by default and violation of the Accord. For the before expounded we declare in the following manner:

That the Tegucigalpa-San Jose Accord remains worthless and without effect for the unilateral default of the de facto government. This was conceived to be implemented in an integrated and simultaneous form; since it cannot be treated as twelve separate accords, it was one single accord with twelve points which had one sole goal, to restore the democratic order and social peace, and with this the coup d'etat would be reverted, which implies the certain return of the President of the Republic elected legitimately by popular vote. And with that, to bring about a climate of national reconciliation and a constitutional electoral process to follow, fair, with guarantees of equal participation and free for all the citizens of Honduras. That the upcoming elections should be developed in a framework of legality and international backing, especially by the OAS and UN and there would be the political conditions and conditions of minimum civil rights to guarantee a result that holds to liberty and transparency.

In this, I want to note that the new position of the functionaries of the Government of the US skirts the initial objective of the San Jose dialogue, relegating an accord with the legitimately recognized Government to a second place, and trying to move this accord toward a new electoral process without concern for the conditions in which it would be carried out. Among others, with public resources that are being authorized by public functionaries not legally recognized and attributed to a Budget document that has not been authorized by the legitimately recognized President.

In these conditions, this process, and therefore its results, will be subject to challenge and non-recognition; which will put in grave risk the future stability of relations between Honduras and the rest of the nations that might recognize its results.

As the Secretary General of the OAS José Miguel Insulza has pointed out, there does not exist a political environment for elections, as has been observed and pointed out by the North American Congress member [Jan Schakowsky] in her visit to Honduras, observing a veritable environment of violation of human rights in Honduras.

This past November 6, we communicated our refusal to continue with a false dialogue, and therefore on the expiration of the due date the text constitutes a dead letter that loses its validity, because an accord is fulfilled in time and form, the violation of this by the de facto regime is for us the condition that determines that the accord stopped existing. Undoubtedly precious time was lost in this unsuccessful attempt.

The presidential election is now scheduled for the last week of November. In this case, as Constitutional President of Honduras, and as citizen who represents and was elected by the democratic vote of the people of Honduras, I see myself obligated to state that under these conditions we cannot back it and we will proceed to challenge it legally in the name of thousands of Hondurans and hundreds of candidates that feel that this contest is unequal and does not present the conditions of free participation.

In Honduras due to the repression that the Honduran people today is subjected to, where there is no respect even for the highest authority of the President of the Republic, where they have not considered that in three years I achieved the best economic indicators and the greatest reduction of poverty in the 28 years of democratic life, where I was removed by force of arms, never was submitted to a trial nor to due process and today have 24 accusations and orders for arrest for drug trafficking, corruption, and terrorism, among others, and where the major part of the Ministers of my cabinet are the object of political persecution and are to be found fleeing the regime in different parts of the Americas.

3500 people detained in 100 days, more than 600 people wounded and beaten in hospitals, more than 100 assassinations and an unknown number of people subjected to tortures committed against citizens that dared to oppose and demonstrate for their ideas, for liberty, and for justice, in peaceful demonstrations, all that converts the elections of November into an anti-democratic exercise by an illegitimate state, due to the uncertainty and military intimidation, for large sectors of the people.

To carry out elections, in which the President elected by the people of Honduras, who is recognized by your Government and the international community, is prisoner, surrounded by military in the diplomatic mission of Brazil, and a de facto president, who imposes the military, surrounded by the powerful in the palace of government, would be a historic shame for Honduras and an infamy for the democratic peoples of the Americas.

This electoral process is illegal because it covers up the military coup d'etat, and the de facto state that Honduras lives with does not furnish guarantees of equality and liberty of citizen participation, for all the Hondurans, it is an antidemocratic electoral maneuver repudiated by large sectors of the people to cloak the material and intellectual authors of the Coup d'Etat.

The elections are a process, not just a day when you go to vote, they are a debate, they are the exposition of ideas, they are equality of opportunities.

In my status as President elected by the Honduran people, I reaffirm my decision that from this date on, whatever will happen, I WILL NOT ACCEPT any accord of returning to the presidency, to cloak the coup d'etat, that we know has a direct impact through military repression on the human rights of the inhabitants of our country.

Mr. President, in the Summit of Countries of the American Continent celebrated in Trinidad and Tobago at the beginning of this year, where I was present, you said

"That we should stop accusing the US for what it did in the past in the continent and that we should look toward the future". The future that today shows us the alteration of your position in the case of Honduras and thus favors abusive intervention by military groups in the civic life of our State (historical cause of the backwardness and stagnation of our countries in the 20th century). It is nothing more than the sunset of liberty and a deprecation of human dignity, it is a new war against the process of social and democratic reform that are so necessary in Honduras.

President Obama, each time that a legitimate elected Government is overturned in the Americas violence and terrorism win a battle and Democracy suffers a defeat.

We still refuse to believe that this military coup d'etat executed in Honduras, is now the new state terrorism of the 21st century. And that it will be the future for Latin America that you spoke to us about in Trinidad and Tobago.

We are firmly resolved to battle for our democracy without hiding the truth and when a people decide to peacefully fight for its ideas, there is no weapon, no army nor maneuver that is capable of stopping it.

In the expectation of your prompt response, I repeat my highest regards.

JOSE MANUEL ZELAYA ROSALES

President of Honduras

For the Spanish original, see the posting by Adrienne Pine.

US: Zelaya Should Be Restored

[Updated]

Ian Kelly, spokesperson for the US State Department reiterated its condemnation of the June 28 coup in Honduras and continued call for the restitution of its president, Manuel Zelaya. "Our opposition to the coup and the destitution has been very clear since the start," Kelly said. Ian Kelly was responding to the letter that Manuel Zelaya sent to Hillary Clinton asking for a clarification of the position of Washington, D.C. on his return to power. He was, in particular, responding to Thomas Shannon's comments which seemed to throw Zelaya to the wolves earlier in the day. "We've made our position on President Zelaya and his restitution clear," said Kelly. "We believe that he should be reinstated in power."

"Make it Official-- It's a Coup"...

So says Howard L. Berman, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives, in an op-ed published in the LA Times.

Berman is among the group of US congress members who were sponsors of a resolution condemning the coup, which has definitely benefitted from the long summer recess of the US Congress.

One can only hope that with the return of the congress to Washington, we will begin to see some pressure exerted on the State Department to use the lever it has, which is the economic one: declare this a military coup (not just a "coup" as a meaningless word). The State Department has been sending relatively clear signals of a consensus about this all the way to just below the top. Secretary of State Clinton has to take that final step, and cannot keep waiting for illusory "progress" in non-existent talks.

The question is, what follows now, even if the US does this?

The Honduran de facto regime has been behaving as if it has private reassurances that the US really approves of its actions. Assuming that it has indeed been reassured, this is corrosive to democracy in Honduras, and will push progressive forces away from engagement with the US.

And if the regime is either misreading the signals, or misrepresenting the messages it has been receiving, that is a sign that the power elite there has read the Obama administration as ineffective and unimportant to its actions. Many commentators have noted that liberal US governments can inadvertently provide greater scope for repressive regimes that assess them as unlikely to act; the Obama administration has exemplified this in its posture of talking the talk but not walking the walk.

Meanwhile, Honduras, already before the coup characterized by the most troubling degrees of dissatisfaction in Latin America, has been polarized and seen a large segment of the population further discouraged about the possibility of democratic institutions succeeding. The campaign for the November election has begun with the resistance calling for non-participation and the de facto regime implying threats against those who encourage non-voting. The coup has shattered the already fractured Liberal party and probably ensured an electoral win for the National party candidate, Pepe Lobo, whose previous run for the presidency was based in large part on advocating introduction of the death penalty. Major cultural institutions have been purged of intellectuals, artists, and scholars, and the next generation of university-educated Hondurans have good reason to consider permanently remaining in the countries where they are students rather than returning to contribute to building their native land out of poverty.

To quote political scientist Greg Weeks, "the current U.S. response in Honduras may well be squandering the small reserves of goodwill President Obama had generated. Soft power cannot be created quickly, but it can be negated easily. In Latin America, the U.S. government tends not to understand (or care much about) that." So hard won, so easily lost.

Advice for Hillary Clinton

The news service EFE is reporting that an anonymous State Department source told them that the US will make a decision on sanctions against the de facto government either Tuesday or Wednesday this week. Hillary Clinton is due back in the country tomorrow. The source indicated to EFE that she is waiting on the results of the latest round of discussions between the de facto government's negotiating commission and the OAS to see if it bears fruit.

In other news, the de facto government has denied that it offered to step aside if Zelaya also renounced his claim to office, in favor of a third person, as was widely reported on friday and over the weekend.

My advice to Hillary Clinton is to go ahead and sign the determination that this has been a military coup. Micheletti made it clear in countless interviews earlier this month that he believes that because you have not yet imposed sanctions, he has your tacit approval to continue. That's how he's reading the ambiguous signals from Washington, DC. You need to send him a clear message that he doesn't have your support if you want him to negotiate.

Update: Voice of America is now reporting that President Zelaya will be in Washington starting tomorrow, meeting with US State Department officials later this week.

Quoting a "senior State Department official" the article reports

The State Department says the Obama administration still intends to make a formal determination that Mr. Zelaya's overthrow was a coup. Such action means that a suspension of most U.S. aid to the Central American country would become permanent. The determination was to have been made last week.

The official said talks with the two sides in the dispute is a factor in the delay. The official said this is an inter-agency decision "that everybody has to be comfortable with."

(emphasis added)

At this point, a week is a long delay to allow for nothing new, especially since everything Micheletti supposedly "proposed" he has since rejected. At this rate, all Micheletti would need to do is propose the same thing every week, wait a few days, repudiate it, and repeat.

Let us hope that whoever is still not comfortable gets so quickly. Today was Day one of the election campaign season, and there is now no way to deny that the November election will be tainted by the effects of the coup.