June 28th, 2009
WASHINGTON, D.C. (BNO NEWS) — “The action taken against Honduran President Mel Zelaya violates the precepts of the Inter-American Democratic Charter, and thus should be condemned by all. We call on all parties in Honduras to respect the constitutional order and the rule of law, to reaffirm their democratic vocation, and to commit themselves to resolve political disputes peacefully and through dialogue. Honduras must embrace the very principles of democracy we reaffirmed at the OAS meeting it hosted less than one month ago,” U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in a written statement on Sunday.
2) Chavez: We can't surrender to the coup
June 28th, 2009
I don't have time to translate all, but Chavez warned that if the Venezuelan embassador is kidnapped or the embassy occupied, Venezuela will have to act, "even militarily." Chavez also confirmed that the Cuban and Venezuelan ambassadors had been attacked in their residences by Honduran soldiers.
Sounds like a provocation directed at ALBA and the Bolivarian movement, as someone said previously. And we have the typical U.S. response: Clinton publicly deplores it even while her State Department is implicated...
3) Zelaya calls on workers and peasants to protest
PAUL KIERNAN, JOSE DE CORDOBA and JAY SOLOMON
The wall Street Journal
Jun 28, 2009
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras -- Honduran soldiers rousted President Manuel Zelaya from his bed and exiled him at gunpoint Sunday to Costa Rica, halting his controversial push to redraw the constitution but spurring fresh concerns about democratic rule across Latin America.Honduran soldiers blocked a street near the residence of Honduran President Manuel Zelaya in Tegucigalpa on Sunday.
"I was awakened by shots, and the yells of my guards, who resisted for about 20 minutes," Mr. Zelaya said, describing the predawn raid of his home to reporters at the San José airport in Costa Rica, where he was flown against his will. "I came out in my pajamas, I'm still in my pajamas....When (the soldiers) came in, they pointed their guns at me and told me they would shoot if I didn't put down my cellphone."
Mr. Zelaya called the action a kidnapping, and said he was still president. The U.S. and other countries condemned the coup. President Barack Obama said he was "deeply concerned" and called on all political actors in Honduras to "respect democratic norms." Venezuela President Hugo Chávez, a close ally of Mr. Zelaya and nemesis of the U.S., said he would consider it an ''act of war" if there were hostilities against his diplomats. "I have put the armed forces of Venezuela on alert," Mr. Chávez said.
Central American leaders called a summit including the ousted president for Monday in Managua, Nicaragua to deal with the crisis, and the U.N. General Assembly planned to meet.
In Honduras, television stations were off the air, electricity was out in parts of the capital, and military jets streaked overhead, recalling Latin America's long history of military coups and dictatorships.
Honduras's Supreme Court gave the order for the military to detain the president, according to a former Supreme Court official who is in touch with the court.
Later, Honduras's Congress formally removed Mr. Zelaya from the presidency and named congressional leader Roberto Micheletti as his successor until the end of Mr. Zelaya's term in January. Mr. Micheletti and others said they were the defenders, not opponents, of democratic rule.
Supporters of Honduras's President Manuel Zelaya demonstrate in front of a tire bonfire in Tegucigalpa.
"What was done here was a democratic act," Mr. Micheletti, who was sworn in as president Sunday afternoon, said to an ovation. "Our constitution continues to be valid, our democracy continues to live."
Mr. Micheletti is a member of Mr. Zelaya's Liberal party. But he had opposed his plans for a referendum that could have led to overturning the constitution's ban on re-election, allowing Mr. Zelaya to potentially stay in power past January, when his term ends.
Mr. Zelaya, a frequent critic of the U.S., has been locked in a growing confrontation with his country's Congress, courts, and military over his plans for the referendum -- planned for Sunday -- that would have asked voters whether they want to scrap the constitution, which the president says benefits the country's elites.
The Supreme Court had ruled the vote was illegal because it flouted the constitution's own ban on such referendums within six months of elections. The military had refused to take its usual role of distributing ballots. But Mr. Zelaya fired the chief of the army last week and pledged to press ahead.
There were no reports of violence Sunday, but tensions were high. Soldiers surrounded the presidential palace, keeping at bay a group of several hundred protesters who gathered to support the ousted president. The demonstrators burned tires and chanted slogans in favor of Mr. Zelaya.
A 9 p.m. curfew was imposed, but in the evening the protesters, many carrying sticks and rocks, began adding chain-link fences to the burning tires as barricades to try to block the military from moving to break up the demonstrations. "I love Zelaya, he's a good president," said Esther Ortiz, a 46 year old doctor, as she helped block off a street by the palace.
Honduras, one of Latin America's poorest countries, was a staging area for the U.S.-backed Nicaraguan Contra rebels during the 1980s. The country of about eight million people subsists on exports of bananas, shrimp, coffee, apparel and remittances from Hondurans in the U.S.
The Obama administration and members of the Organization of American States had worked for weeks to try to avert any moves to overthrow President Zelaya, said senior U.S. officials. Washington's ambassador to Honduras, Hugo Llorens, sought to facilitate a dialogue between the president's office, the Honduran parliament and the military.
Soldiers stormed the house of leftist President Manuel Zelaya in a predawn raid Sunday, arresting him and removing him from power amid a growing crisis over Mr. Zelaya's plans to try to get re-elected. Video courtesy Fox News.
The efforts accelerated over the weekend, as Washington grew increasingly alarmed. "The players decided, in the end, not to listen to our message," said one U.S. official involved in the diplomacy. On Sunday, the U.S. embassy here tried repeatedly to contact the Honduran military directly, but was rebuffed. Washington called the removal of President Zelaya a coup and said it wouldn't recognize any other leader.
The U.S. stand was unpopular with Honduran deputies. One congressman, Toribio Aguilera, got prolonged applause from his colleagues when he urged the U.S. ambassador to reconsider. Mr. Aguilera said the U.S. didn't understand the danger that Mr. Zelaya and his friendships with Mr. Chavez and Cuba's Fidel Castro posed.
Retired Honduran Gen. Daniel López Carballo justified the move against the president, telling CNN that if the military hadn't acted, Mr. Chávez would eventually be running Honduras by proxy. It was a common view Sunday. "An official who was subverting legality and had violated the Constitution was removed," wrote Mariela Colindres, a 21-year-old Honduran who is studying at Indiana University, in an email. "Everything was done legally and this does not imply a rupture in the constitutional order."
The U.S. has a controversial history of backing coups in Latin America. It began promoting democracy strongly after the end of the Cold War, but in 2002 it hesitated in condemning a brief coup against Mr. Chávez and was sharply criticized by other Latin nations. Mr. Chávez came back to power and radicalized his posture against the U.S. Since then, he periodically claims the U.S. wants to oust him in a coup.
Moves to try to stay in power through the ballot box have become increasingly common in Latin America. Leftist Latin American leaders such as Venezuela's Mr. Chavez, Ecuador's Rafael Correa and Bolivia's Evo Morales have used referendums for a similar purpose, and Colombia's right-wing President Alváro Uribe is trying to change the constitution to allow him a third term.
Latin America analysts said the Honduran coup will complicate President Obama's efforts to re-engage a region where anti-Americanism has flourished in recent years. They said Mr. Chavez is likely to seize on the crisis to depict Central America as under attack.
At a Sunday news conference in Costa Rica, Honduran President Manuel Zelaya, ousted at gunpoint by the army hours earlier, denounced his exile as a kidnapping.
As a result, analysts said Mr. Obama will need to aggressively call for the reinstatement of President Zelaya, despite U.S. concerns that he is seeking to mirror Mr. Chávez's campaign to secure limitless rule.
"It's very important for the U.S. to come out against the coup and make the point that the U.S. supports democracy unequivocally," said Kevin Casas-Zamora, Costa Rica's former vice president and a senior fellow at Washington's Brookings Institution. "This would prevent Chávez from stealing the show."
Mr. Casas-Zamora and other regional analysts said the coup raised questions about just how much influence Washington actually has in Central America, given the Obama administration's failed effort to avert it. Honduras receives more than $200 million in development aid from Washington annually.
Both sides of the Honduras crisis traded allegations Sunday. The secretary of Honduras' congress, José Alfredo Saavedra, showed reporters what he said was a resignation letter signed by Mr. Zelaya. The letter cited the crisis and "insuperable health problems" in resigning. Mr. Zelaya said it was a fake.
The ousted president called on unions, workers and peasant and indigenous organizations to demonstrate peacefully for his return. "I ask the people of Honduras to be calm, but for them to defend their democracy and rights," he said.
4) OAS HAS JUST CONDEMNED COUP IN HONDURAS, CALLS FOR ZELAYA'S REINSTATEMENT
Sunday, June 28, 2009
In a major blow to the coup leaders in Honduras who just illegally installed themselves in power, the Organization of American States (OAS) has just issued a resolution condemning the coup against President Zelaya, demanding the return of Zelaya to power immediately and clarifying that the OAS will not recognize any other government other than Zelaya's in Honduras. Whew! For a minute there I thought this was going to turn out like Haiti in 2004 when coup forces kidnapped President Aristide and forced him into exile and, while the OAS "condemned" the constitutional rupture, they never called for Aristide's reinstatement, and since the US backed the coup, an illegal transitional government was installed and nothing more came of it from the international community.
This time, things seem different. Still waiting on the US Government's official position...If they say they will not recognize the coup government, then we have to see how things will play out in Honduras.
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