Micheletti: Zelaya faces "18 charges of violating the constitution"

Roberto Micheletti's latest reiteration of his intransigence that would seem to disqualify him from any further coaxing as it rejects the basis of the San Jose Accord contains an interesting slip-up.

As reported yesterday by McClatchy, Micheletti is quoted as saying

Zelaya would be jailed and tried on 18 charges of violating the constitution if he returned.

Not a direct quote, and could easily be bad reporting, but if accurate, Micheletti appears not to understand that under current Honduran legal procedure, those charged with crimes are not automatically thrown in jail; there is the whole business of hearings and trials.

Judges can even ignore requests for imprisonment, as justice Maritza Arita did in the case of three protesters charged in the aftermath of the UNAH invasion.

(Justice Arita, despite also jailing some protestors, is now the focus of retaliation in Honduras by the de facto government, working through its wholly-controlled Supreme Court, due to the pique her refusal to accept government over-charging has aroused.)

But equally interesting is Micheletti's assertion that President Zelaya has been charged with 18 counts of violating the constitution. According to an article published July 2 in the pro-coup newspaper, La Prensa, the 18 charges trumped up after the coup include a variety of criminal complaints. The road was opened to this wider gamut of charges by the Supreme Court's cynical ruling on June 29 that since President Zelaya was no longer carrying out the office of President, he was subject to prosecution through the ordinary courts.

Let's be clear: the reason I have not translated these 18 charges yet is that they are spurious, politically motivated, and entirely suspect, based on manufactured "evidence" of the flimsiest kind and in many cases, of dubious legal basis.

But nonetheless, I would expect Micheletti to know the difference between constitutional violations and other kinds of crimes. As the ultimate sponsor of this bill of lies, he should know that many of the "crimes" represent administrative disputes that would at best be heard by the Court of Contentious Administration; ordering the construction of a civilian airport at Palmerola (which Zelaya discussed after the deadly crash in Tegucigalpa in 2008) seems unlikely to be a crime at all; and others of the so-called constitutional "crimes" were actions that congress supported.

My favorites, though, which I find most difficult to imagine a way to misrepresent as supposed constitutional crimes:

11. Label as political the decisions of the Public Prosecutor and Judicial Power.

12. State that the National Congress did not have the right to approve the Law of Plebiscite and Referendum

13. Accuse the regulation of plebiscite and referendum approved by Congress of being a "lying law"

[The Honduran Constitution explicitly guarantees the right of freedom of opinion and speech, or at least it did until the de facto regime began suspending civil rights]

AND--the one that really mystifies me--

17. Publicly exhibit a child contaminated with the H1N1 flu virus.

Which deserved billing before the afterthought of the litter:

18. Firing General Romeo Vásquez Velásquez.

Good to know they have their priorities straight. And I will let you know if I figure out how presenting a poster-child for an anti-flu campaign violated the constitution.

"Between them they've buried the bipartisan system": Rodolfo Pastor Fasquelle

In an editorial today in El Tiempo, the Minister of Culture continues his commentary on the spectacle that is the post-coup reality in Honduran politics, endorsing an emerging coalition of progressives:

Pepe and Elvin: The Gravedigger Clowns of the Film

It comes to pass that now, no one took part in the coup, except the no-counts that don't know where to hide. Many businessmen say that they did not, as if their words haven't remained in print and their voices recorded and their handiwork and external lobbying betrayed.

The political leaders of the coup say that neither were they. Carlos Flores says that he was not, that "it was Teté". Pepe goes crazy and Elvin declares 35 days after that "he is not a golpista" and that he condemns "the form" although he condones the basis. A sector of PINU finally repudiates their golpista congress members. But it is obvious that formally speaking the Congress, which is also called "Congre-Zoo", carried out the coup and the congress members responded to their political leaders. That's why the people shout in the street, "golpista congresspeople, trash, out" and when they can they kick them in the street. Without a consensus of the political leaders there would be no coup, since Micheletti, who they are now leaving solo, neither invented the coup nor would have arrived at first base when sent to bat without them.

Paraphrasing Swift I once commented to President Reina that I raised horses because they seemed more noble and rational than politicians. He didn't contradict me and he didn't disagree with me. They should be better than us. And they are the worst breed. I mentioned previously (in "J'accuse") the principal political actors of the coup, and among the witches and alchemists, those generally known, Rafael Callejas and Carlos Flores Facussé, now old politicians, that have once sworn the Constitution that now they are smashing and, exercising their criterion of excellence, the presidency of the Republic that lies here, prostrate, but confronting the repressives with gallantry 45 days later.

Although he competes with Arturo Corrales, Flores is the most cynical. As he says he is writing a memoir I want to assist him. He got in as a congressmember with the blessing of rodismo[*] and intervened many times in the drafting of the constitution that now he broke saying that it was to preserve it. He achieved renown because he wanted to launch himself as a candidate when he was a cabinet minister in the presidency of Rosuco [Roberto Suazo Cordova], on whose orders he also went to the Congress, accompanying Mich [Micheletti] with a proposed law for the Congress to declare itself a constitutional assembly and reform the stony articles, that now he passionately defends.

So many things one could say about Carlos Flores, dangerous and irritable, who many people fear. And that he believes himself loved. Son of a golpista, father of a golpista. Godfather of the usurper and of the judges, attorneys, prosecutor and head of the coup bench.

Carlos has been trying to put this behind him since the day of the coup, when he saw what was coming, saying to anyone who would listen "it wasn't like that man and I told you, but you didn't heed me". Since the week now past he began to publish in his press the adverse opinion of the coup of my teacher Gautama B. Fonseca. But surely you conspired, Ingeniero. We all know what you said to the rest and your role of sponsor. The golpistas that you visited, the media barons, but also the joint command, the "capos" and their deputies, was public.

Your newspaper fabricated the golpista propaganda that prepared the work and set the stage. Your editorials and your little pills always have been golpista even when they wanted to seem unaware in their cynicism. You are a villain, Sir, there is no way to evade the infamy of history. Your father was more cautious. Your own writings condemn you. History will not pardon you, it takes apart propaganda.

The other politicians who conspired will have an identical destiny, although they also try to distance themselves from the coup, Elvin Santos and Pepe Lobo, no one is going to vote for you, Sirs. You are going to have to invent the votes when polls give each one of you one-third favorable in your own parties, versus negative opinions from half. It is now very late to go around repenting. And no one is going to pardon you. You were at the negotiating tables and we all know that you, as candidates of your parties, could have put the brakes on Congress. Pepe wants to pass as ready and lost his second opportunity, Santos lost the only one that he is going to have. Between the two they have buried the hundred-year-old bipartisan system.

No well-born liberal should vote for Elvin Santos, the gravedigger of the greatest party of the isthmus. I have known various bad candidates, but none so fatuous and so destructive as this incontinent Cantinflas, this wet clown.[**] No one should receive him in an honorable house, on pain of being marked. No one should listen to his pleas. No one should speak with him nor turn to see him nor buy a white t-shirt in his malls.

But we don't have to cry for this system that seems that it is going to endure forever, and that we are never going to have parties that will propose ideas, different proposals, real commitments to the people. It could be that there remains, in sight, above the mud with which they cover it, a tight fist, calcined and cracked from the sun, extended saluting those names. The golpistas opened the system so that this new alliance can be established of social organizations and the UD and the varicolored red-and-white progressives, committed to the people, that will win the next elections strikingly and will write glorious pages of our history and a new constituent.

*rodismo: A reference to the conservative movement in the liberal party named after Modesto Rodas Alvarado.


**"payaso mojado": I was tempted to translate this "crying clown", but chose the literal "wet clown" both because of its pairing with "incontinent Cantinflas" and in reference to a story by Daniel Alarcón, "City of Clowns", in which the image refers to a clown literally pelted with water balloons. The image is not uncommon in Spanish as that of a pathetic figure of ridicule.

"I wouldn't say there has been a coup": David Scott Palmer and the art of contradiction

Honduran correspondents sent me a Spanish language interview with David Scott Palmer, datelined August 16 from Buenos Aires, from the Argentinian online news medium Pagina12. A faculty member at Boston University, Palmer is described in the Spanish language media as an insider, "an academic and consultant for the State Department and the network of US intelligence agencies, and ex-instructor at the School of the Americas".

As a reminder, here is what Palmer said about the prospects for military coups in the 21st century in Fall 2002 in an article published by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University:

The military coup is no longer an alternative mechanism for acceding to power in the region. There were 19 successful coups in the 1960s in Latin America and 18 in the 1970s, but just seven in the 1980s and only two in the 1990s. The two coups thus far in the new century lasted just hours, both aborted by intense international pressure.

As the days become months, Honduras would seem to spoil this lovely emerging pattern, wouldn't it?

That would be because we don't understand that what happened in Honduras is not a coup, just "an interruption of democracy", which apparently isn't bound to the same timetable:

[Q] Why did the Obama government not act more decisively in the face of the coup in Honduras?

[A] I wouldn't say that there was a coup, rather an interruption in democracy, as occurred with Bucaram, Mahuad, and Gutierrez in Ecuador or Sánchez de Lozada in Bolivia. I think that the US was very clear, it condemned the removal of Zelaya and brought the topic to the OAS, to correct the error of the Bush government of having supported the coup against Chavez in 2002.

Not at all clear on the face of it why Honduras should be compared to these two examples.

The Ecuadorian situation saw the overthrow of the three named presidents in 1997, 2000, and 2005. One analysis notes that

All three presidents who have fallen from power [in Ecuador] have been similar in their authoritarian attempts to concentrate power....In the three governmental collapses, the behaviour of the US has been similar: to ensure that whoever succeeds to government is firm on the US military base at Manta, the foreign debt and the FTAA - TLC trade agreement and to ensure a constitutional resolution.

So perhaps what we are to take from this comparison is that Zelaya was an authoritarian attempting to concentrate power, and that US interests are in maintaining access to military bases (Palmerola/Soto Cano), trade agreements, and at least some form of constitutional succession? Or maybe the comparison is intended with the role of violence in Ecuador:

The three crises have not involved the highest levels of armed confrontation with the civilian population; nevertheless, civil confrontation and brutal repression have become increasingly normal.

"Increasingly normal" brutal repression. But not "the highest levels of armed confrontation" that might, one presumes, have qualified as coups (and not just an "interruption").

The Bolivian situation seems even less comparable, as it involves the resignation of the president in 2003 following popular mobilization. Maybe what is supposed to be comparable is that it was a popular movement that rejected President Sánchez de Lozada, who is accused of ordering the killing of unarmed civilians, thus perhaps to be identified with the "brutal repression" that characterized Ecuador's three political crises. Or maybe the idea is that somehow the complex social movements that mobilized against President Sánchez in Bolivia, as discussed by Nancy Postero, are somehow comparable to the complexity of the factions against President Zelaya-- even though it sounds more like a description of the forces now demonstrating for the restitution of constitutional government.

Our confusion was shared by the interviewer for Pagina12, Santiago O’Donnell, whose next question was actually a statement, and that drew one of the oddest comments on the Honduran coup to date:

[Q] It doesn't seem to me that these were similar situations. They took Zelaya in his pajamas.

I understood that he was in pajamas when they went to detain him, but that the military gave him time to dress, therefore there are no photos of Zelaya in pajamas. The military acted by order of the Supreme Court, but they did wrong in expelling Zelaya from the country. The problem is the Honduran Constitution does not contemplate political trial of the president. Greater firmness is demanded of the US, but it did what it had to do. If we learned anything in Central America in the 80s it is that the parties are the only ones who can resolve a conflict. In 1987 the presidents of Central America closed themselves up in a house in Esquipulas, in the outskirts of San José, and signed their peace accord despite the opposition of the US and the Contadora group, that were excluded from negotiations and were not even named guarantors of the process.

Compressed into one short paragraph are all the myths of the expulsion of President Zelaya, along with the argument offered for imposing the Oscar Arias mediation on the Honduran situation. And something new: the military, it seems, wasn't rude at all: they allowed President Zelaya to get dressed...which means all those pictures that are captioned "President Manuel Zelaya, still in his pajamas", need to be re-examined: on second look, clearly he is wearing a T-shirt. So much more dignified.

To be fair, President Zelaya got some support from Palmer. O’Donnell reports that during the question and answer session after his talk, which was about foreign policy in the Obama administration, Palmer

surprised a Honduran student and declared anti-chavista, saying that Zelaya did well in allying himself with the bolivarian leader: "Chavez sold oil at low price to Honduras, as well as other Central American, Caribbean, and South American countries. Honduras does not have oil and its provision is fundamental, especially in these times. Therefore I think that Zelaya did well, although such aid always comes at a price, and that price is obvious".

Obvious indeed: not a coup, just an interruption in democracy.

"Honduras is not Alone": The Resistance Strengthens (an editorial)

An unsigned editorial in Tiempo this week argues that, with the emergence of a solidified and well-organized resistance signified by the marches on San Pedro Sula and Tegucigalpa, Honduras is at a historic moment, when it can transform the resistance into a continuing political force of global significance. Notably, the writer sees the scheduled visits by the OAS and the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights as critical opportunities. This editorial is typical of a reorientation visible in other ways, from demands for restoral of the legal government, toward long term reform and necessary changes:

The Zero Hour

The most important cities in the country, Tegucigalpa-- in the south-center-- and San Pedro Sula-- in the north-- are replete with demonstrators who have turned up from their respective zones of influence to strengthen their opposition to the de facto regime and their demand that constitutional order be restored.

The fact that thousands of citizens have carried out a march of a week long, from distant places to the political and industrial capitals, under a burning sun and innumerable privations, with the goal of defending the State of Law, is something never seen in Central America, and possibly, not even in Latin America.

It is an astonishing collective attitude that the Hondurans have not yet begun to analyze in depth, but are guessing its repercussions on the dynamic of political and social change that the majority of the people demand and that inevitably will have to follow its natural course to be realized, in conformity with the obstacles or assistance that is presented along the way.

Until now, the national resistance movement against the coup d'Etat of June 28-- which is already a symbolic date in history-- has not lost heart. On the contrary: it is seen to strengthen with the "institutional" repression that has applied a large range of means, from the media to physical and psychological brutality, that in total conform to a system of dictatorial terrorism.

This strengthening of the peaceful resistance is not casual, but rather proper to the evolution of human nature, as we can validate throughout history, from the dawn of Christianity, through the Jewish Holocaust in the second World War, to the passive resistance of Ghandi in his quest for independence for India, and that of Nelson Mandela against apartheid in South Africa.

From this perspective, although it may appear exaggerated for the smallness of our country in the world concert of nations, we Hondurans should begin to reason consciously about the opportunities that this popular awakening offers to advance toward the necessary political, economic, social and cultural reforms that are necessary in Honduras, in place of attempting to intercept them and sharpen the conflict.

To do this is the job of the politicians who, effectively, know and comprehend the national reality and would be disposed to act in consequence. As happens almost always in these cases, the inertia against change also levels the obsolete and refractory leadership and affirms or creates new leaders. All this forms part of the social and political dynamic, that to a certain extent achieves its own autonomy.

In this conjuncture, Honduras is not alone. It has the rest of the world on its side, and we Hondurans should not lose this extraordinary circumstance, unique, independent of the side of the controversy on which we are found: golpistas, constitutionalists, or neutral. In historic terms, we have arrived at the Zero Hour.

In the coming days-- days of resistance-- two important events are foreseen, definitive in this situation and linked together: the visit by the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights, and then, the presence of a mission of foreign ministers of the OAS and of Secretary José Insulza to promote the approval by the de facto regime of the San Jose Accord.

This is the right moment-- and, surely, the last opportunity-- to enable constitutional order and national reconciliation without more traumatic consequences. It is the correct moment for a patriotic decision.

"Will no One Rid Me of This Troublesome Priest?": Legal Retaliation Threatened for Calling for Boycotting the Election

Roberto Micheletti might well want to echo this famous cry of England's King Henry II, frustrated by Archibishop Thomas Becket, as Honduras' independent clergy continue to break ranks with their own archbishop, apologist for the coup.

And as with Becket, there are officials of the Micheletti regime ready to take up the challenge.

An article in the pro-coup El Heraldo on August 14 quotes the regime's appointee usurping the functions of the Minister of Gobernación and Justicia, Oscar Matute, threatening Father Andrés Tamaya of Olancho.

Tamayo is a parish priest, ecologist and activist against deforestation in eastern Honduras (a cause that has claimed the lives of multiple Hondurans assassinated since the late 1990s, among them Carlos Escaleras, Carlos Flores, Janeth Kawas, and Carlos Luna, and that has made Father Tamayo himself an object of death threats), whose work was recognized in 2005 by a Goldman Prize.

Despite his many years of residence in and work for Honduras, Matute rather ham-handedly implies that Father Tamayo's salvadoran birthplace makes him somehow less truly Honduran, bringing it up in an otherwise mystifying hypothetical comment that leads the Heraldo article:

If you as a honduran arrived in El Salvador to incite the people to not vote, they would immediately put you in jail or throw you out ['de patitas en la calle'].

Now, some might say I am being overly sensitive here. But there is a long-term current of anti-salvadoran sentiment in Honduras that is open to priming, like the anti-nicaraguan sentiment already being exploited by the de facto regime. While the truth is that Honduras' population is intimately mixed with the populations of its neighbors, especially Nicaragua and El Salvador, this troubling and volatile chauvinism is already part of regime rhetoric.

Honduras' constitutional Article 24 actually establishes relatively generous means to become a naturalized citizen, so that any Central American who lives one year in the country can declare Honduran citizenship. Father Tamayo has lived and worked in Honduras since 1983. The writer of the article feels the need to insert in its text the fact that Tamayo is "of salvadoran origin, naturalized honduran", which both constitutionally and pragmatically is of no relevance. Bringing up El Salvador in this context is clearly meant to imply he is not really Honduran.

The article argues that Tamayo

could lose his Honduran citizenship if it is confirmed that he has made calls against the electoral process that is to be carried out this November 29.

Father Tamayo has been widely quoted as calling for a boycott:

If the coup government (of Roberto Micheletti) does not accept restoration [of President Zelaya], there will be no elections. We will boycott the elections.

[AFP has the same story in English with a slightly different version of the quote.]


El Heraldo quotes Matute responding in a radio broadcast:

If [Tamayo] has expressed those concepts publicly, that would expose him to the sanctions established by the laws.

So, is there a legal basis to Matute's threat? Let's start with the Constitution. Article 29 says that naturalized citizenship can be lost by accepting citizenship in another country, or by the revocation of a letter of naturalization (which is a means by which citizenship can be bestowed on people who have not otherwise qualified for it by residency).

Neither option fits here. Article 40, point 3, does define as a "duty" of citizens to exercise the right to vote. And Article 42, point 4 says that citizenship rights can be lost, following a judicial proceeding,

Por coartar la libertad de sufragio, adulterar documentos electorales o emplear medios fraudulentos para burlar la voluntad popular



(For restricting the liberty to vote, adulturating electoral documents or employing fraudulent means to circumvent the popular will)

But what, precisely, would meet this standard?

The best I can come up with as a basis for Matute to be threatening loss of citizenship for advocating a boycott is Constitutional Article 44. It states that

El voto es universal, obligatorio, igualitario, directo libre y secreto.



The vote is universal, obligatory, egalitarian, direct, free and secret.

Matute might try to prosecute on the basis that Tamayo, and others urging a boycott, were encouraging Hondurans to fail in a fundamental constitutional duty.

With participation rates in elections dropping below 50% of the electorate, obviously, the obligatory nature of the vote is not currently being enforced. Otherwise, half the Honduran electorate would be in prison doing 4 to 6 years, based on penalties outlined in the Law of Elections, Decreto 44-204, which became effective with its publication in La Gaceta on May 15, 2004.

Article 209, point 1, of the electoral law sanctions anyone who "impedes another with or without violence from exercising his or her electoral rights". Or Matute could try to apply Article 212, point 15, which sanctions "supplanting another person in the exercise of the vote" (which carries the same penalty) but that pretty clearly is intended for someone pretending to be someone else.

I cannot find anything in Honduran election law that actually says urging others not to vote is punishable.

There isn't even anything defining sanctions for failing to exercise the "obligatory" vote.

I question whether a legal case could actually be made for violating the constitutional demand that all citizens vote.

So while this constitutional prescription must be the basis on which the de facto regime now threatens those who are speaking out against forced participation in the November elections, if they are held under the authoritarian regime, I am dubious about there actually being a legal basis under the penal code that would allow prosecution of someone urging others not to vote.

Matute vaguely says

these are serious errors and could carry responsibilities (for Tamayo).

Looking at it from the basis of the actual law codes he would need to satisfy in a prosecution, this reads as intimidation.

The bad news: the regime is apparently prepared to prosecute an internationally known activist who also happens to be a Catholic priest on flimsy charges that could easily be countered, among other things with the constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and the requirement that people not be prosecuted for their opinions.

The good news: the only reason for them to be this concerned is if a boycott seems like a viable and dangerous thing.

Article 239 does not legitimate Zelaya's removal

Efrain Moncada Silva has an editorial in today's La Tribuna talking about article 239 of the Honduran Constitution. There's still too much misinformation out there about this clause, and what it means, and whether Zelaya was ever accused, formally, of violating it.

To refresh your memory, article 239 reads, as written in 1982:

Article 239: No citizen who has already served as head of the Executive Branch can be President or a designated person. Whoever violates this law or proposes its reform, as well as those that support such violation directly or indirectly, will immediately cease in their functions and will be unable to hold any public office for a period of 10 years.

Articulo 239: El ciudadano que haya desempeñado la titularidad del Poder Ejecutivo no podrá ser Presidente o Designado. El que quebrante esta disposición o proponga su reforma, así como aquellos que lo apoyen directa o indirectamente, cesarán de inmediato en el desempeño de sus respectivos cargos, y quedarán inhabilitados por diez años para el ejercicio de toda función pública."

(As you will recall from my previous posting on article 239, I understand the Supreme Court decision of November 12, 2008 to have reverted the clause to this language, while Moncada Silva cites the amended version in his editorial. The difference, however, is minor. The amended version substitutes the Vice President for the designated person.)

As you can see, the article is fairly simple, only 2 sentences long. The first has to do with a prohibiition against being elected president twice in a row, in harmony with article 4, paragraph 2 of the Constitution. It also relates to the text of article 374, which says that anyone who has ever exercised executive power, whatever their title, cannot ever again be elected president.

Moncada Silva spends most of his space discussing the second sentence. He notes that it should not be interpreted superficially nor twisted for political ends. It should not be interpreted simply, or in isolation. Moncada Silva asks two questions whose answers illustrate how it works.

How can a President of the republic break the prohibition to be elected again as Vice President, or Designated person?

Moncada answers that they couldn't, because the Supreme Election Tribunal would prohibit it, and it would nullify the election if it had taken place, alocating fines to the person who broke it.

How can one propose a reform of the first sentence of article 239?

The only way is if the President of the Republic, via his Secretary of State, proposed a law following the procedures in articles 213, 245, and 9 of the Constitution.

No representative or employee of the government of Zelaya supported, either directly or indirectly any re-election of Zelaya, nor even postulated it. As Zelaya said during the OAS reunion in San Pedro Sula in June, he won't be in the government one day past January 27, 2010.

Can there really be a penalty of immediate removal from the office of the President of the Repubic, or any other such office?

No, the second sentence of article 239 needs to be interpreted in the context of the rights and guaranties that the Constitution establishes, among which are the right of liberty (articles 61 and 69), the right to defend oneself (article 82), the presumption of innocence (article 89) and due process (articles 92 and 94).

So who determines and declares the removal from office?

The Constitution doesn't answer this, nor does the penal code. In any case, it would be the final result of a determination in front of independent and impartial judges.

Moncada Silva concludes, "in summary, there was no immediate removal from the office of President of the Republic deposed in the coup and thrown out of the country. The so called "constitutional presidential succession" does not have any legal validity because it was done against the constitutional procedures. I will explain this shortly".

So why this focus on article 239? The Supreme Court didn't cite it in its case against Zelaya. Congress didn't cite it in its June 28th resolution removing Zelaya from office and appointing Micheletti president. So where did it enter the conversation?

The trail leads back to a July 1 motion (published July 5) offered by Orlando Romero Pineda and approved by "all members of the four Political Parties, except those of the Democratic Unification Party". It literally says as part of point 4 that "As a result, as is expressed in the report and Legislative Decreee of the 28th of June, the Honorable National Congress agreed to censure the conduct of the citizen José Manuel Zelaya Rosales and remove him from office by virtue of Constitutional Article 239....". However, any examination of the June 28th document will fail to show a single mention of article 239 anywhere on its pages.

From the original publication of Romero Pineda's resolution on July 5, article 239 went on to become the dominant argument presented by the Micheletti government for Zelaya's removal.

It is clear the constitutional article, and the way the golpistas could use it, was discovered long after they had spirited Zelaya from the country. It is only on July 5 and later that it appears in the pro-coup paper, La Prensa, as a justification for the removal of Zelaya.

Update: Since writing this I've been able to review more newspaper archives, and find article 239 being cited in quotations as early as July 1 in La Tribuna. That article describes a different motion, also presented on the same day as Romero Pinedas, July 1, submitted by National Party member Rodolfo Irias Navas. That motion established a "commission of foreign relations" whose purpose was to talk to the representatives of foreign governments and explain why Zelaya was thrown out. In an interview in the article, Irias Navas postulates that Zelaya violated article 239 simply by proposing to assemble a National Constituyent Assembly to write a new constitution. As we've seen above, its not that simple.

Unified Messaging

An unconfirmed report on Radio Globo just now indicates that the pro-coup media were assembled and informed of the unified messaging that was to be communicated during the visit of the Interamerican Human Rights Commission next week, and when the OAS Commission arrives after them. The main points:

(1) There is no crisis, just a political situation

(2) There is no polarization; there are only disagreements.

(3) When they are asked why José Miguel Insulza will not be allowed to visit with the rest of the OAS commission, they should say that its because there is an assassination plot against him by Venezuelans in the country.

Did I mention that yesterday, even as his San Jose negotiating committee was meeting with Insulza in Washington, D.C., Micheletti was a again stating that Insulza would not be allowed to visit as an official part of the OAS commission, but "only if he wants to visit as a tourist".